


Some Pieces They Adjoin

by zebra (statusquo_ergo)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Case Fic, Drug Use, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Tumblr Prompt, it's a bit complicated, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-04-26 21:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 67,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5020729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/zebra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(<a href="http://krumcake.tumblr.com/post/84983728019/honestly-im-really-only-interested-in-soulmate">krumcake</a>: Honestly, I’m really only interested in soulmate AUs with alternative plots.)</p><p>Soulmates allow each other to perform at their maximum potential; for the greater good, the government therefore has a vested interest in pairing them off. Unfortunately for the totalitarian regime, not everyone is terribly interested in having their private life autocratically dictated and some would rather seek happiness on their own terms. Things get sticky when that's not supposed to be an option.</p><p>For <a href="http://thenaebyrd777.tumblr.com/">Naomi</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Worldbuilding inspiration from _1984_ and _Psycho Pass_.

It’s impossible to walk down the hall without tripping over a young couple ecstatically clinging to one another, a middle-aged couple giggling like schoolchildren, an older couple gazing dreamily into one another’s eyes. Well. Obviously it is, technically, but some days it doesn’t feel like it, and today is one of those.

John smiles at one such pair—the man is maybe 25, the woman closer to 40—and hopes they won’t notice the instinctiveness of it, the insincerity. They don’t, her hand clasped tight in his and giddiness painted across both their faces, lost in their little world. It occurs to John that he could turn right round and shove them both out the window, and they wouldn’t even notice until their skulls cracked open on the pavement below.

If he didn’t do it an hour ago to those squealing teenagers, he’s not going to do it now.

Reaching the dull little door of his dull little office, John puts his hand on the knob and rests his weight on his cane. Sarah Sawyer, bless her, got the results of her and her beau’s blood test back from the lab this morning and hasn’t been able to stop fidgeting and grinning to herself all day long. He doesn’t think she knows she’s doing it, and he really does like her (most of the time); as a friend, he should leave her to it, maybe even congratulate her if he’s feeling particularly generous.

He hears another pair walking behind him, whispering furtively to one another, and sighs. Yeah, well, this is what he gets for working in an office so close to the blood lab.

Stop procrastinating, John. He twists the knob and enters the office to find Sarah ushering a patient out of her examination room, exchanging smiles as Sarah directs her down the hall to the laboratory. John pulls out his mobile and keeps his eyes on the screen as he walks to his own exam, not feeling particularly bad about it.

It’s only a few minutes later that there’s a knock on his door, and he rests his elbows on his desk and digs his nails into his forehead for a few seconds before inviting his guest in.

Mary Morstan, the new nurse. A pert little blonde with hazel eyes, he thinks, not that he’s gotten too close a look. She smiles as she leans into his room, hanging off the doorframe and holding a clipboard under her arm.

“Doctor Watson,” she says unnecessarily. He raises his eyebrows and smiles thinly.

Mary raises the clipboard, not that he can read it from where he’s sitting. “Mr. Stamford here to see you,” she says. “Last one on the list for today.”

Thank god. He waves vaguely and she ducks back out, speaking to someone, and in comes a portly man he sort of recognizes.

“John,” Mr. Stamford says. “John Watson.”

John stands and smiles. Mr. Stamford gestures toward himself.

“Mike Stamford,” he clarifies. “We were at Bart’s together.”

That’s it. John’s smile becomes a little more genuine.

“Yes,” he says as it clicks. “Yeah, of course. What can I do for you, Mike? Lab send you over for a screening?”

Mike laughs, sitting at the opposite side of the desk as he shakes his head. “Afraid not; just the new school year. I’m teaching now, back at Bart’s.”

“You don’t say.”

John sits as well and takes a new patient form out of his desk. He doesn’t usually see patients for physicals that aren’t related to soulmate screens; Mike must’ve requested him for some reason. Nostalgia, maybe. They sit in silence for a minute before Mike speaks up again.

“Don’t think I saw your name on the roster when I came in for my start-of-term physical last year,” he hedges. “I heard you were abroad somewhere, what happened?”

John looks at him flatly. “I got shot.” Mike looks taken aback and he feels briefly guilty for being so curt. “Army,” he clarifies, and Mike nods.

“You laying down roots here now?” he asks, though his tone implies it’s rhetorical. John takes Mike’s ID card and starts filling in the form.

“I can’t stay in London much longer on an Army pension.”

“And what’s this doing for you?” Mike asks as he looks around the room.

“Civil servant’s salary,” John says, “barely covers the groceries. Insurance card.”

Mike pauses at the sudden subject change, but takes out his wallet and hands over his insurance card with an awkward smile.

“Couldn’t Harry help?” he asks as John flips to the second page.

“Like that’s gonna happen,” he says distractedly. Mike hums a reluctant acquiescence.

“Ever think about a flatshare or something?”

“Come on,” John says, losing patience with the man’s persistence as he shoves the completed form into an empty patient file and lifts his stethoscope. “Who’d want me for a flatmate?”

Mike chuckles.

“What?”

\---

The lab isn’t as sterile as he remembers, isn’t quite as blue-tinged incandescent as he’d expect. There’s so much equipment sprawled across the table that he whimsically imagines the cupboards and cabinets must be bare; someone is hunched over the far side of the table and squeezing a pipette, glancing up at them and then back to the experiment (or whatever).

“Well, bit different from my day,” John says, pausing in case this is an intrusion. Mike chuckles again.

“You’ve no idea!”

“Mike, can I borrow your phone?” the dark-haired stranger interrupts, sitting and laying the pipette aside. “There’s no signal on mine.”

“And what’s wrong with the landline?” Mike asks. John looks between them and tries not to feel ignored (ah, but it’s so familiar).

“I prefer to text,” the man says as though it should be obvious. Mike pats the pocket of his suit jacket.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s in my coat.”

Well this is just silly. John pulls his own phone from his back pocket and holds it out, though the man is still several feet away. “Er, here,” he says anyway. “Use mine.”

“Oh.” He looks genuinely surprised and John feels rather pleased with himself. “Thank you.”

“It’s an old friend of mine, John Watson,” Mike introduces as the man takes John’s phone and begins to type.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” the man replies. John frowns; better than the simpering pity he sometimes gets when people notice the cane, but a few yards short of a more traditional “Nice to meet you.” He isn’t sure what to make of it and wonders what the man is writing.

“Sorry?”

“Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?”

Mike? No, Mike just smiles knowingly at John’s baffled look, no help there.

“Afghanistan,” he says. “Sorry, how did you know…”

The man hands his phone back and returns to his station, opening a laptop John hadn’t noticed at first and typing rapidly as he ignores the half-formed question.

“How do you feel about the violin?”

This conversation is giving him fucking whiplash. John looks to Mike again, but that smug smile hasn’t budged an inch.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, “what?”

“I play the violin when I’m thinking,” the man goes on as he continues to type. “Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end.” He looks up then, finally, his bright eyes shining curiously, and John feels like he’s supposed to respond but doesn’t know to what. Rescue comes in the form of another surprising question: “Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”

“Who said anything about flatmates?” John asks suspiciously. The man’s grin is terrifying.

“I did,” he says, putting on an impressive overcoat. “Told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is showing up with an old friend, clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn’t that difficult a leap.”

“How did you know about Afghanistan?” John persists. The man ignores him, wrapping an expensive-looking blue scarf around his neck and withdrawing a mobile from his coat pocket.

“Got my eye on a nice little place in central London,” he says. “Together we should be able to afford it.”

John worries that the man has vastly overestimated how much he’ll be able to contribute to a flatshare, but doesn’t especially want to bring it up.

“We’ll meet there tomorrow evening,” he goes on as he walks toward John and the laboratory door. “Seven o’clock. Sorry—gotta dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.”

“Is that it?” John blurts out, pivoting towards the stranger who has, mercifully, paused his exit.

“Is that what?”

John’s brain simultaneously catches up with itself and stumbles wildly over a flood of new questions. The resulting confusion makes him more snappish than he’d like, but the other man seems unfazed; should he be suspicious? Yeah, probably he should, shouldn’t he?

“We’ve only just met and we’re gonna go and look at a flat?” he asks instead of one of the hundreds of other questions he’d like to.

“Problem?”

This is unbelievable. John looks to Mike again, but, surprise surprise, he’s no help at all. Fine; if he has to spell it out, he will.

“We don’t know a thing about each other,” he says. “I don’t know where we’re meeting; I don’t even know your name.”

The man’s gaze turns scrutinizing for just a few seconds before he rattles off:

“I know you’re an Army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him, possibly because he’s an alcoholic; more likely because he recently walked out on his wife—his soulmate, no less. I know you haven’t found _your_ soulmate but you’re not actively searching anymore, you don’t see the point. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic—quite correctly, I’m afraid.” He smirks, sort of a turnoff but John distantly notices that he said “brother”; that’ll be nice to hold onto for later.

“That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?” He makes to leave, then leans back to meet John’s eye. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes, and the address is two-two-one B Baker Street.” He winks, and John’s brow furrows. “Afternoon,” he says, and then he’s gone.

What the hell just happened.

John looks to Mike, who surely must’ve done this on purpose, this is some kind of bizarre practical joke between the two of them, but Mike only smiles again, the bastard.

“Yeah. He’s always like that.”

Thoughts are beating the shit out of each other for retail in his brain, and John feels the beginnings of a powerful headache pulsing just at his temple. This is terrifying, this is baffling, this is a _horrible_ idea, and yet—

And yet.

There’s something missing, John knows. John’s always known he’s got an empty space in his life; not a soulmate, per se, he doesn’t believe all the propaganda, all the television ads, the scaffold posters, the pamphlets stocked in every hospital, post office, government building, constantly asking, imploring, guilting him and every other citizen into enrolling in the DOH’s official soulmate matching system (“Enrich your life!” “Find your purpose!” “For the common good!”). But surely _something,_ something that was too briefly satisfied by the army (plaster on a bullet hole), something chaotic and warlike and deeply, deeply flawed.

Something that this madman, this bizarre person who knows (almost) everything without being told (almost) anything, this Sherlock Holmes, may be able to…what? Fix? Solve? Demolish entirely?

Something.

“John.”

Oh—Mike’s been trying to get his attention for a minute. Right. The laboratory. The screening. Right.

“Thanks,” John says. “I’ll uh, I’ll send your test results to the DOE before I go home, get that all settled.”

Mike just nods, smiling, always smiling.

The air settles around them, heavy and warm with the faintest hint of machine oil and autoclave.

John nods and walks out of the lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orwell, G. (1949). _1984_. United Kingdom: Secker  & Warburg.  
> Yamamoto, K. (2012). _Psycho Pass_ [Television series]. Kokubunji, Tokyo, Japan: Production I.G.
> 
> DOH: Department of Health  
> DOE: Department of Education


	2. a world of consolation

Tiny sounds from the city drift through the room. A violent wind flutters a nearby awning; a door slams shut; a motorcycle revs arrogantly and roars off down the street. A man’s voice filters through the thin walls, tinged with a hint of madness.

The standing lamp in the corner throws spikes of sickly yellow up against the wall and the heavy window curtain, illuminating the space around itself in a radius of about three feet. Piece of crap. John sits on his bed on the opposite wall, stares unseeing at the boarded-up fireplace, the desk with his cane leant up against it, the RAMC mug that still has a bit of tea in it and should be sitting on a coaster but isn’t.

_You don’t see the point._

Yeah, well.

John’s always kind of known that’s how to word it, what he feels, but he’s never had to say it aloud to anyone else, and no one’s ever said it to him. Now that it’s out there, though, now that he can confront it for what it is—is it? Is it true? Is that the reason? _You don’t see the point._ It sounds defeatist. It sounds weak, it sounds quick and cheap.

“I don’t _want_ a soulmate,” he’s heard that plenty. Children dragged into his office by their well-intentioned parents for soulmate-specific physicals, vials of their blood extracted for the laboratory down the hall to screen and enter into the system, shoving these poor kids into the bureaucratic machine without telling them why it’s _important._ Because this is how we operate, that’s why. Because you do as you’re told, that’s why. Now sit down and shut up and stick out your arm.

It’s a mindset that sticks with some people, he knows that too. Psychologists tend to consider it a brain disorder, the desire to remain alone, to operate only with one’s own resources, talents, skills, because to do otherwise would make them a leech or a cheater or a hack. It’s not common, but it’s got its own code in the ICD-10. Chapter V: Blocks F00-F99: Mental and behavioral disorders.

Must be dangerous.

Being without a soulmate isn’t exactly _easy._ John doesn’t doubt his own abilities, not for a second; he’s an Army doctor, a Captain, and a damn good one at that, but good luck persuading the rest of the world to see him through the same glass.

Soulmate Status: _Unattended._  
Marital Status: _Single._

The conclusion is never voiced, because that would be discrimination, and that’s illegal, but everyone jumps to the same place: Potential: _Unmet. Out of reach. Beyond the scope of your abilities._ And no one in their right mind would stoop to receiving medical care from anyone operating at less than maximum capacity when there are so many practicing medical professionals out there who are matched, who are maxed, who are _fulfilled._ Forget that he’s got plenty of actual practice working under “stressful conditions” (a major concern), forget that he’s already saved more lives than most of them ever will (no one seems to care), forget that he’s put his own life on the line to do it (immaterial), forget his sacrifices, forget Queen and Country, forget “credentials” and “life experience” and “firsthand knowledge” because all _anyone_ cares about is that _goddamn fucking status._

_You don’t see the point._

He sees the point exactly as he’s supposed to see it.

After that, he sees the emptiness.

Does he even have a soulmate? He must. Probably. If they aren’t dead already. Maybe he killed them in Afghanistan, wouldn’t that be a kick. Or maybe they’re still alive but somewhere he’ll never find them because they’ve given up too, convinced themselves that they don’t care. Maybe they’re in a committed relationship, resigned to living out the rest of their days trapped under the glass ceiling as long as they can do it with their one true love. Maybe he’ll meet them someday and they’ll pivot back at first glance, _Nope, this isn’t what I wanted,_ and that’ll be the end of that.

Maybe he should stop thinking about all those what-ifs and maybe-thens and focus on what’s actually in front of him.

Sherlock Holmes.

John pulls his mobile out of his pocket and scrolls to “Sent Messages,” and it feels invasive even though it really shouldn’t, but he reads:

If brother has green ladder  
arrest brother.  
SH

The man was doing chemistry when John saw him, wasn’t he? So what’s this about a green ladder? The text makes him sound like a policeman or a detective, but even though they only spoke for a brief time, that doesn’t sit quite right. Besides, having a soulmate is one of the prerequisites for joining NSY, and if this Sherlock Holmes fellow has his, then why’s he looking for a flatmate? Maybe he had one and they died? Staying on the force after that would require special dispensation, but it’s not entirely without the bounds of possibility if he’s especially skilled. But then why was he working on a case in a teaching hospital instead of at the Yard?

John sighs. This is pointless speculation. Although—if Holmes _is_ a member of NSY who’s lost his soulmate, the special dispensation might’ve made the news. John opens his laptop, double-clicks the Internet Explorer icon, and hopes for the best. 

_Sherlock Holmes._

Nothing in the Times, no breaking news…nothing on television…

But what’s this?

_The Science of Deduction._

And now for something completely different.

\---

John checks his watch as his limps down the pavement. 18:59—19:00. Good timing. Good luck, more like. A black cab pulls up at the curb just as he reaches the door to 221B and he watches Sherlock Holmes climb out and offer the driver his fare.

“Mr. Holmes,” John says, leaning on his cane and offering his other hand to shake.

“Sherlock, please,” he replies as he grasps it. John smiles firmly.

“Well,” he says, looking around at the street, “this is a prime spot. Must be expensive.”

Sherlock brushes his concerns away immediately. “Oh, Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, she’s giving me a special deal. Owes me a favor.” John isn’t quite sure why, but he has the sense that that can be said of a lot of people. Sherlock continues: “A few years back, her husband got himself sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out.”

“Sorry—you stopped her husband being executed?” Sounds like one hell of a favor.

“Oh no,” Sherlock says proudly. “I ensured it.”

The opening door saves John having to formulate a response as an older woman holds her arms out to Sherlock.

“Sherlock, hello,” she says warmly. He grins and leans into the hug, stepping back to present her and John to each other.

“Mrs. Hudson, Doctor John Watson.”

“Hello.”

“How do?”

With the minimal amount of fuss, which John appreciates very much, Mrs. Hudson steps back into the hall and ushers them both inside. “Come in,” she prompts, so they do. It occurs to John that this is precisely the sort of situation in which he’d usually feel like an interloper, sneaking into this established friendship and trying to make a space for himself, but they both seem so much to _want_ him there. It’s all quite bizarre.

Sherlock has already begun bounding up the stairs, but he pauses at the first floor landing to wait as John limps along behind him. Mercifully, it’s not an impatient sort of waiting so much as the eagerness of a small child, which doesn’t fit at all with his imposing presence but is certainly endearing. John reminds himself that he still doesn’t actually know much about the man; don’t be a sucker, soldier. Guards up.

The door opens on a living room unexpectedly crowded with… _stuff,_ John doesn’t really know how else to categorize it. Books and boxes and papers and chemistry equipment and just _stuff._ Evidently Mrs. Hudson doesn’t make a habit of showing the flat to many prospective tenants, if she’s using it as a storage space. The foundation is good, though, a solid sort of old-world charm about it.

“Well, this could be very nice,” he says eventually. “Very nice indeed.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees. “Yes, I think so. My thoughts precisely.”

Their next words come out simultaneously:

“So I went straight ahead and moved in.”

“Soon as we get all this rubbish cleared out.”

Er.

John looks up at Sherlock awkwardly, shifting his weight to his good leg. In retrospect, it makes a certain kind of sense that these would all be Sherlock’s belongings. The chemistry equipment might’ve been a clue, anyway.

“Oh,” he stutters at Sherlock’s befuddled expression. “So, this is all…”

“Well, obviously I can, um, straighten things up a bit,” Sherlock interrupts, striding to a reddish armchair and tossing some of the files on it into a box that doesn’t really have space for any more contents. Scooping up a pile of unopened letters, he brings them to the fireplace (not boarded up) and lays them on the hearth, stabbing a multi tool knife into the center.

John, however, is distracted elsewhere. He points his cane near the hearth’s edge.

“That’s a skull,” he notes.

“Friend of mine,” Sherlock dismisses. “Well, I say ‘friend’…”

John isn’t entirely sure he wants to hear the rest of that, but he’s saved again by Mrs. Hudson bustling into the room and picking up a cup and saucer.

“What do you think, then, Dr. Watson?” she coaxes. “There’s another bedroom upstairs if you’ll be needing two bedrooms.”

“Of course we’ll be needing two,” John says. What exactly had Sherlock told her about him before this evening?

She doesn’t look bothered, though, waving off his concerns. “Oh, don’t worry,” she says, “there’s all sorts round here.”

He looks for Sherlock, who’s puttering around now tossing small containers into larger ones, apparently trying to straighten up (if that’s even the term for it) as he ignores their conversation. Yeah, that’s more like it. Mrs. Hudson takes the teacup and saucer to the kitchen and tuts at the equipment covering practically every inch of counter space.

“Oh, Sherlock,” she admonishes, “the mess you’ve made!”

She begins to straighten up as well, and John looks between the two of them for a moment before plodding over and dropping into the reddish armchair.

“So.”

Sherlock keeps tidying. If they’re going to make this work, John needs to start setting some precedents.

“I looked you up on the Internet last night.”

There it is. Sherlock stops and turns to him, a slender volume falling from his grip and landing on the carpet. “Anything interesting?” he asks as though he’s genuinely curious. Is there something out there that John missed? Something damning?

Stop it. Don’t be paranoid.

“Found your website,” he says. “The Science of Deduction.”

Sherlock’s grin turns positively shit-eating and his chest puffs up; he really is quite tall. “What did you think?”

The expression John puts on is skeptical at best, and some of the wind goes out of Sherlock’s sails. He almost feels bad about it, but really now.

“You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and an airline pilot by his left thumb.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, his rushed tone coming off defensive, “and I can read your military career in your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits in your mobile phone.”

“How?”

Sherlock smiles to himself and doesn’t answer, and Mrs. Hudson emerges from the kitchen with a newspaper in place of the cup and saucer.

“Sure seem to have been a lot of suicides recently, Sherlock,” she says disdainfully. “And it’s not even that time of year. You know, I’m surprised Mr. Lestrade hasn’t called you up about it.”

As though waiting for the cue, a car rumbles to a stop outside the door and a faint blue glow illuminates the heavy curtains. Sherlock looks out the window apathetically and then turns toward the still-open door.

“He has now.”

John looks between them and feels ignored. “Mr. Lestrade?”

Neither responds, but an attractive silver-haired man jogs up the stairs and into the living room and fixes Sherlock with the gaze of a man ready for an argument he’s not expecting to win. Sherlock somehow draws himself up even taller and puts his hands in his pockets.

“What’s changed?” he asks imperiously. Mr. Lestrade, whoever he is, doesn’t seem remotely daunted; John is impressed.

“Have you been keeping up with these cases at all?” he asks. Sherlock arches a brow in an expression that’s easy to interpret as “Of course,” with just a hint of “You’re an idiot,” and John’s worried Lestrade will take offense but he may as well not have noticed.

“Well, turns out we had a hint with this one.”

Sherlock looks—not horrified so much as _offended,_ and John sits up a little straighter. Lestrade is in NSY, then, not a difficult thing to discern, but why’s he coming to Sherlock? And they obviously know each other, apparently pretty well, but how?

“Finally picked up on that, have you?”

Now it’s Lestrade who looks offended, and a bit surprised (but not really). “You _knew?_ ”

“Where is it?” Sherlock demands, ignoring the accusatory question.

“The hint?”

“The _body._ ”

Lestrade and Sherlock resemble a pair of hunting dogs facing off over a carcass, subtly braced for impact and neither desiring to launch the first strike; Lestrade answers warily, hoping to avoid outright confrontation.

“Cricklewood, Melrose Avenue. Will you come?”

Sherlock narrows his eyes, calculating; it’s the same expression he had just before spilling John’s life story. It clears quickly, but he still waits before delivering his response.

“Who’s on forensics?”

“Anderson,” Lestrade says like it’s bad news, but he’s more relaxed; somehow he knows he’s won, and John wonders again at the relationship between the two men. Sure enough, Sherlock puts on a sour face and turns away, eyeing John.

“Anderson won’t work with me,” he says petulantly.

“Well, he won’t be your assistant,” Lestrade replies.

“I _need_ an assistant.”

Rather than respond to the whingeing, Lestrade looks critically at John, who feels unexpectedly pinned.

“Will you come?” Lestrade asks, and John fumbles silently before Sherlock replies.

“Not in a police car.” By now they’re both side-eyeing John, and he elects to sit as still as possible and doesn’t even try to work out what’s going on. It’s Lestrade who breaks away first, not smiling at Sherlock but nowhere near as frustrated as John imagines he’s got a right to be.

“ _Thank_ you,” he says, immediately going to dash back down the stairs. As the front door slams, Sherlock grins at John and walks to the door, whipping his greatcoat on with an indulgent flourish.

“You’re an Army doctor.”

“Yes.” (Well he _was._ )

“You’re wasted in civil service.”

It’s true, but he shouldn’t say it. (Except it’s about time someone did.)

“Thank you?”

“Want to start a bit of trouble?”

“Oh, God, yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ICD-10: 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems
> 
> 195 Melrose Avenue in Cricklewood is where serial killer Dennis Nilsen murdered his first 12 victims. (That's irrelevant to the story, it's just why I chose the address.)


	3. a world in which cause and effect are erratic

John has never seen anyone able to hail a cab so quickly as Sherlock Holmes; maybe the entire DFT is one of those entities owing him a colossal favor. What kind of charge must that’ve been? John is fairly sure he doesn’t want to know. Choosing the believe that Sherlock is simply fortunate, he climbs into the backseat, leaning his cane against the bench and closing the door behind him, and the cab takes off toward Cricklewood.

Sherlock concentrates on the space in front of him, his body jostling with the car’s movements but remaining otherwise completely still. John fidgets, looking back and forth between the passing cityscape and the interior of the cab.

“Okay,” Sherlock says out of nowhere, tipping his head back and leaning against the seat, “you’ve got questions.”

John balks. It’s true, to be sure, but this sounds like an opening and he hadn’t expected one so easily. If it’s got an expiration on it, he’d better make it count.

“Who are you?”

Gotta start somewhere.

“What do you think?”

Yeah, that makes sense.

John frowns thoughtfully. “NSY doesn’t hire consultants,” he says, picking up at the end of his last train of thought and assuming Sherlock will either understand everything that came before or not care enough to ask. “Are you…are you some kind of specialist?”

Sherlock looks pleased, or so it seems; John isn’t completely confident yet in discerning between his versions of “content” and “smug” (and of course there’s plenty of room for overlap). “Quite a reasonable deduction,” he says, and John feels a pleasant little thrill, “but no.” (It was fun while it lasted.) “I’m a consulting detective. Only one in the world. I invented the job.”

“Couldn’t pass the detective’s exam?” John teases.

Sherlock scoffs. “Hardly; I’ve no interest in their _bureaucracy._ But when the police are out of the depth, which is always, they consult me.”

“The police wouldn’t consult with someone unattended.”

As soon as he’s said it, John wishes he could take the words back. He’s confident enough in his guess that Sherlock doesn’t have a soulmate, but it’s the height of vulgarity to make assumptions like that to a person’s face. It’s still possible, after all, that Sherlock’s soulmate is dead, in which case John’s probably now going to have to give up on any hope of staying at 221B Baker Street. Weirdly enough, though, he’s not exactly _nervous;_ there’s just something about Sherlock that makes common courtesy and civil conduct seem…secondary.

Sherlock looks at him curiously, surprised but also sort of proud. “Normally no,” he agrees, “but in my case they’re willing to make an exception.”

“But they certainly don’t consult amateurs.”

“When I met you for the first time yesterday, I said, ‘Afghanistan or Iraq?’ You looked surprised.”

John thinks back to yesterday afternoon, tries to think of something, _anything_ he might have said, done, worn that could’ve given it away, and comes up blank. “Yes,” he says then, “how _did_ you know?”

“I didn’t know,” Sherlock corrects, “I saw. Your haircut, the way you hold yourself says ‘military.’ But your conversation as you entered the room said trained at Bart’s, so Army doctor—obvious. Your face is tan but no tan above the wrists. You’ve been abroad, but not sunbathing. Your limp’s really bad when you walk but you don’t ask for a chair when you stand, like you’ve forgotten about it, so it’s at least partly psychosomatic. That says the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic. Wounded in action, then. Wounded in action, suntan; Afghanistan or Iraq.”

Sherlock doesn’t blink the entire time he’s speaking, and John tries to hold his gaze but doesn’t quite make it to the end. It’s enthralling to watch, for the short time it carries on, and when it’s all laid out John has to admit that it seems so _simple._ Sherlock seemed to enjoy explaining his deductions, so John figures he can push a little further.

“How did you know I’m in civil service?”

“Army doctor, clearly skilled—you must’ve been good to last as long as you did, if you weren’t you would’ve been kept on the base for being unattended, nowhere susceptible to combat exposure.” Sherlock pauses, then adds in such a way that John can _hear_ that it’s a footnote: “A high-level medical professional would never have time in the middle of the afternoon to bag off with an old classmate for a social call with a stranger; looking for a flatshare, you’re not well off, not at the top of your field, and you’re not carrying around any mementos of a former partner or exhibiting signs of mourning, so, unlikely you’ve been paired in the past. ‘Harry Watson from Clara,’ the phone’s obviously your brother’s hand-me-down.” (The inscription on the phone case, John had nearly forgotten about that.)

“But,” Sherlock picks up steam again, “unattended, no one would dare take you on as a surgeon back in civilian territory; honorable discharge, not entirely debilitating, it would be disgraceful for you to go unemployed after your return, but where to stick a doctor to keep him quiet and productive? Civil service. Eligible for promotion if you ever do find your soulmate, but until then you can be left in the dregs to lay the framework for the rest of them.”

“The rest of them,” what an odd way to put it. It sounds as though Sherlock doesn’t expect to ever find a soulmate for himself, although John supposes he’s doing fine without. No glass ceiling for the only consulting detective in the world.

“You see?” Sherlock says after a beat. “You were right.”

“ _I_ was right?” John stresses, just to be sure. “Right about what?”

“The police don’t consult amateurs.”

He smiles briefly, then turns his head to look out the window as he bites his lip. John simply stares, waiting for the egotistical pin in the conversation that must surely be coming after such masterful mental gymnastics. Sherlock has every right; but no, he’s just looking out the window, leaving it all out there for John to do with as he will. It’s immensely trusting, and John hopes to deserve it.

“That was amazing,” he says. Sherlock’s gaze whips back to him and his mouth is open just a crack, as though he wants to reply but doesn’t know how.

_Two, three, four—_

“Do you think so?” he asks finally. John grins.

“Of course it was. It was extraordinary; it was quite extraordinary.” Yes, that’s a better word. Sherlock’s expression relaxes somewhat and he begins to smile in turn.

“That’s not what people normally say.”

“What do people normally say?”

“‘Piss off’!”

They exchange proper grins and John decides that normal people are idiots.

\---

It’s about half an hour before the taxi reaches Melrose Avenue, and there’s only space to drive past a couple of houses before barricades shut down the road. After Sherlock pays the driver (does the man even _need_ a flatshare, John wonders), they walk together towards the police tape strung across the street as though they belong there; officers bustle between police cars, muttering to one another and shooing off the odd pedestrian, but Sherlock is unconcerned and John tries to project the same.

“Did I get anything wrong?” Sherlock asks abruptly. John can’t tell if he’s expecting a yes or a no, and decides to ease him into it.

“Harry and me don’t get on, never have. Clara and Harry are soulmates, but they split up three months ago and they’re getting a divorce; and Harry is a drinker.”

“Spot on, then,” Sherlock says, sounding impressed. “I didn’t expect to be right about everything.”

John almost feels bad after that, but it’s not enough to stop him.

“Harry’s short for Harriet.”

Sherlock stops dead and frowns spectacularly.

“Harry’s your sister!”

“Yeah, so what am I supposed to be doing here?”

Sherlock shakes his head, more or less to himself. “ _Sister._ There’s always something.”

“Seriously, what am I doing here?”

Sherlock walks the rest of the way to the tape as a dark-skinned, bitter-looking woman in a camel trench coat comes to meet him. John takes a few steps to stand at Sherlock’s side and looks between them; not another indebted friend, it seems.

“Hello, freak,” the woman says. Right, so definitely not a friend.

“I’m here to see Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Sherlock replies.

“Why?”

“I was invited.”

The woman looks at John, obviously suspicious, and he reflexively stands up straighter and locks his eyes with hers.

“Who’s this?”

“Doctor John Watson,” Sherlock says crisply, “colleague of mine. John, Sergeant Sally Donovan. Old friend.”

John smiles blandly; sounds like there’s some history there, maybe he’ll ask about it later. Sergeant Donovan switches her stare back to Sherlock.

“How did _you_ get a colleague? What, did he follow you home?”

DI Lestrade _did_ invite Sherlock, so he’ll be admitted to the crime scene for sure, but John suddenly feels quite unwelcome. That he knows how to handle, at least.

“Would it be better if I just waited,” he says, taking a small step back, “and—”

“No,” Sherlock interrupts, brazenly lifting the tape for John to duck under. Sergeant Donovan gives the pair of them one last speculative glance and raises her radio.

“Freak’s here,” she says into the static. “Bringing him in.”

John tries hard not to scowl at Sergeant Donovan as he and Sherlock follow her to the vaguely modern Victorian house that seems to be the locus of the officers’ activity. Sherlock acts unperturbed by the nickname and John is angry on his behalf; well, this must be the other side of that “owed a lot of favors” business.

Inside, they veer off into the room on the left which may have served as a lounge sometime in the distant past, before the house was abandoned. DI Lestrade is there with boxes full of disposable blue coveralls, white cotton shoes, procedure masks, and latex gloves, proffering the former to John as Sherlock waits by the door.

“You need to wear one of those,” Sherlock says. John hesitantly takes a coverall.

“You don’t?”

“Don’t bother,” Lestrade says as Sherlock ignores the question. “It’s easier this way.”

John shakes his head and grins a little as he slides on the cotton shoes. Sherlock does deign to grab a pair of latex gloves, he notices, snapping them onto his long hands and layering on a second pair as he looks down his nose at Lestrade.

“So where are we?”

Lestrade tosses the box of gloves to John as he pulls on his own second pair. “Upstairs.”

Sherlock bolts and John follows without a second thought, grabbing a mask on the way; Lestrade is right behind as though he was expecting it (he probably was).

“Two minutes,” he says, and Sherlock hums disagreeably.

“May need longer.”

Oddly, for all the officers puttering around outside, there don’t appear to be any on the first floor; Lestrade gestures to a closed door down the hall and Sherlock leads the way.

“Mary Dixon, according to her credit cards,” Lestrade says. “That’s all we’ve got so far, but we’re running all the usual databases.”

“Status?”

“You’ll know when we do.”

Sherlock huffs and opens the door, leading John inside. A woman’s body lies face up on the floor of the filthy but otherwise empty room; she’s dressed in a navy skirt suit, respectable enough except that it’s clearly polyester, stiff and unwrinkled despite her prone posture and the amount of time she must’ve spent there. An audacious silver brooch laid in with a brilliant grey-green stone is pinned to her lapel, immediately drawing John's attention; he hangs back uncertainly but Sherlock swoops forward and kneels by her head, pressings his fingers just under her jaw.

“Doctor Watson,” he enunciates, seemingly for Lestrade’s benefit. “If you don’t mind.”

John leans on his cane and raises an eyebrow skeptically, and Lestrade looks between them with some amusement. Apparently unflappable, Sherlock waves him over, tapping the edge of his hand against Miss Dixon’s clavicle. What the hell; limping over, John crouches on the opposite side of the body and looks at the woman’s neck. There’s a necklace, some stone on a chain, and a little bruising, but that alone is hardly conclusive of anything.

“What do you want me to do?” he murmurs as Sherlock leans his face close to Dixon’s and sniffs.

“Help me make a point,” Sherlock murmurs back, moving his attention down Dixon’s body to her ornamented right hand.

“That being?”

Rather than answer, Sherlock runs his hand down Dixon’s torso; it moves in a slight arch, the angled posture hard to discern visibly in the dimly lit room, and his eyes narrow. Waiting a moment before he decides Sherlock’s not going to respond, John scoots forward and lays his hand on her arm; either she’s never exercised a day in her life or her muscles have recently atrophied, seemingly disproportionate to the amount of time she’s been dead. Tilting Dixon’s face to examine it more clearly, he notes that the pupil of her bulging eye is hugely dilated, but the other eye has been gouged out, and John begins to wonder just what he’s got himself involved in.

“Poisoned,” Sherlock says loudly, standing and beginning to type away on his mobile. “Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor Watson?”

John scrambles to his feet, his cane slipping slightly. “Uh yes—yes,” he says as he steps around the body, “yeah, that’d be my guess.” Not that it accounts for the gouged eye, but that may’ve just been some weird fetish of the killer’s or something. Lestrade, meanwhile, is unimpressed with the whole demonstration.

“Unless you’ve got anything else for me, Sherlock, I’m not going to be able to keep justifying your presence here to the rest of my team.”

“Oh, please,” Sherlock sneers, “you can do whatever you want with them.”

Lestrade shrugs a little.

“Anyway she certainly wasn’t killed here,” he goes on. “The poison was most likely ingested, and the eyeball was removed postmortem, but there aren’t any signs of struggle, no vomit, bleeding, excessive drooling, et cetera. Surely you must’ve noticed.”

“I did.”

“Mm. She’s being bought off; rather, someone tried to, but even though it worked, they later determined that eliminating her was a better option. You said you received a clue before you found the body.”

“‘Bought off’?” Lestrade quotes. Sherlock glares at him.

“Look at the _brooch,_ ” he says, pointing toward the body, and John does. “Her rings and her bracelet are worn, polished but not well; they have sentimental value to them and she tries to keep them looking respectable but doesn’t have the time, or the resources, to do it properly and can’t afford to have them professionally cleaned—unattended then, obvious—the necklace is clean, no scuff marks, probably new but cheap, plated metal, glass stone, but look at the _brooch._ Platinum, _musgravite,_ the design full of folds and crevices but none of them with a speck of grime or dirt and the whole thing costing well over 25,000 pounds.”

“Someone tried to keep her quiet about something,” Lestrade surmises to Sherlock’s exasperation.

“Someone did, but someone _else_ has elected to subvert the message,” Sherlock amends. “Whoever gave her the brooch had no intention of tossing it away; anyone with so much disposable income giving a lavish gift to an anonymous woman would have attracted some attention, it would’ve been in the public eye. This was a gift with _intent_ from someone with power, someone who must have their soulmate already but is frittering away their fortune on _this_ woman? _No_ ,” he turns back toward the body, and John turns as well in reflex, “this is a _bribe._ She’s clearly taken it, she’s wearing the damn thing, and if the supplier had been the one to kill her then they would have taken it _back;_ it’s avoided attention up to now but to find such a thing on a dead woman would prompt an investigation, surely, or questions at the very least. So the killer’s smart enough to kill her elsewhere and leave a crime scene nearly devoid of tactile clues but so stupid as to leave _that_ thing here? No, one of the team’s gone rogue. Now, Detective Inspector, _the clue._ ”

“Fantastic,” John murmurs. Sherlock’s eyes dart to him and away nearly as quick.

Lestrade runs a hand through his hand and shakes his head, stepping into the room to Sherlock’s side. “There was a sheet of notepaper stapled to the front door when we got here with a list of—”

“The names of several of the recent suicide victims,” Sherlock interrupts, putting his mobile back in his coat pocket. Lestrade doesn’t look remotely surprised; Sherlock must do this sort of thing often. No wonder the Yard keeps him around. “Not much of a lead-in, though, is it, you didn’t see it until you’d arrived.”

“No, well, turns out one of the operators on our tip line got this call yesterday.” Lestrade opens a small notebook and reads the transcription: “‘Take note: Cricklewood. Don’t worry about trying to save this one. Call it your reproach.’ Fits into that rogue rebellion theory of yours, doesn’t it.”

Sherlock’s eyes light up and Lestrade frowns at him. “Sherlock.”

“We’ll be in touch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DFT: Department For Transportation
> 
> Musgravite: a tremendously rare precious stone valued at approximately $35,000 (£22,855) per carat.


	4. a world in which time is a circle

Sherlock is positively giddy as they leave the crime scene, the glint still in his eyes and his hands anxiously clasping and unclasping as he grins (to himself and to John, who still isn’t all in on the joke). He’d paid no mind to Sergeant Donovan as she’d accompanied them out, but she had made sure to leave John with a warning—“Watch out for him”—that he’s not quite sure how to take.

They exit Melrose Avenue to Anson Road and the cab may as well have been waiting for them for how quickly it comes (John could get used to this). Sherlock delivers an address to the driver before he climbs into the backseat and immediately takes out his mobile, typing furiously; from what John can see, he’s researching a lot of profiles and maybe some public event photoshoots, but he’s scrolling so fast that it’s hard to be sure.

John notices after awhile that they’ve passed the turn onto Baker Street.

“Sherlock,” he says before he thinks better of it. It’s possible that Sherlock makes some noise of acknowledgement, but it’s about equally possible the cab just hit a bump in the road. “Sherlock, where are we going?”

“Hm.” Sherlock keeps typing, but only for another minute; finally sliding the mobile into his pocket, he smiles devilishly at John. “Bart’s, of course.”

John frowns. “Bart’s, the hospital?”

“Obviously.”

“And…why are we going to Bart’s?”

“For information about the bodies, naturally.”

“Information about the—the bodies of the suicide victims? The ones from the note on the door?”

Sherlock looks terribly pleased, but doesn’t respond other than to grin some more and then look out the window, and John thinks back over the crime scene.

“Sherlock, how do you even know which victims were on that note?”

“Took a photo.”

“But it was gone when we got there.”

“Still in the evidence bag, though.”

Oh. Well, yeah, that’s true. John leans back against the seat, tapping his fingers against the handle of his cane; the suicides are related to the death of Miss Mary Dixon, Sherlock said as much to Lestrade, but how? And how did he know before Lestrade told him that the note had been stapled to the front door? Come on, Watson, work it out.

As for how the bodies are related, John admits that he doesn’t know enough about the other cases to make even an educated guess, but what about the note on the door? “Stapled,” maybe Sherlock noticed a couple of pinpricks in the wood? But the door was old, it had pockmarks all over it. Something else, then… Had there been a stapler near the stoop? What a stupid idea, of course not. Was the wood stripped in the area where the staples had been removed? No, John would’ve noticed a spot like that. But what else, what _else?_

“Small angular indents in the wood.”

What? John turns his head, but Sherlock is still looking out the window.

“You’re trying to work it out, aren’t you? How I knew about the note. The house is old, the door is old, the wood is soft and rotting from exposure to the elements and lack of care; when the murderer pressed the stapler down, it left an impression in the wood surrounding the pricks of the staple itself. Just a matter of noticing the pattern.”

John smirks to himself and shakes his head. _Obvious._

“Plus the staple was still in the notepaper.”

Oh, for goodness’ sake.

The cab stops in front of St. Bartholomew’s, and John hauls himself out as Sherlock pays the driver and sends him on his way. They’re not headed back to the chemistry laboratory this time, though; in fact Sherlock leads them into a wing John can’t recall ever having visited before, even in his time as a student. Despite a few medics roaming the halls and talking quietly to each other, or flipping through files and stacks of papers, everything has a deathly sort of paleness about it that sets his nerves closer to the edge.

Sherlock flings a set of double doors open and glides through them, and John follows into a—morgue. Of course he would have that kind of unfettered access, why not.

A mousy young woman in a lab coat stands next to an autopsy table, complete with corpse, and startles at their abrupt entrance but offers a tentative smile when her eyes land on Sherlock. He smiles back winningly and John looks quickly between them.

“Molly,” Sherlock greets. “Burning the candle at both ends, I see.”

“Sherlock.” Her eyes widen a bit as she evidently remembers something. “Oh—your riding crop; I have it, here…”

Riding crop. Sure, why _wouldn’t_ Sherlock have left his riding crop in the mortuary twice in one week, makes all the sense in the world.

Sherlock accepts the proffered tool graciously but immediately lays it down beside him on the counter. “Thank you, Molly. I was wondering though, I have here a list of somewhat recently deceased men and women who you may have seen come through your lab and was hoping you’d be so kind as to procure their _files_ for me to glance through.”

She looks at him shrewdly, and John smirks.

“Mr. Lestrade won’t give you the murder books?”

“Oh, no need to bother him for all that just yet.”

“Is it because you know he won’t give them to you or because they're not murders?” Molly asks. “Sherlock, everyone who’s been through here for the last five _months_ has already been identified. Some of them had soulmates, I can’t just…let you do as you please.”

“No no,” Sherlock reassures her, “not the bodies, that may or may not come later. I’ll do with just the autopsy records for now, if you’d be so kind.”

“You couldn’t get them on your own?”

“And pass up the opportunity to pay a visit?”

Biting her lip, Molly turns to look toward a door that’s about the right dimensions to lead to a closet; Sherlock’s smile fades as her eyes leave him, but he replaces it in more than enough time for her to look back. It’s impressive, if disturbing in its easy insincerity.

“How many files?” Molly asks in a tone that indicates there’s definitely a number at which she’ll cut him off. Sherlock waves his hand dismissively.

“Just the four.”

She frowns and turns her face away, and John finds himself worried that the number’s been hit, even without understanding the precise need for any of the reports at all. Sherlock grimaces, though, and takes a step closer to her.

“Please, Molly, it’s important.”

Crude manipulation, John recognizes it at once. Molly seems to as well, or at the very least she crosses her arms and shifts a little from side to side as she weighs her options.

“You're not to do anything to the bodies,” she says eventually. “I can’t just let you at them because you find something suspicious in the autopsy reports, Sherlock, some of these people had families, they’ll want to… They’d not want you to go mucking about in the name of _science._ ”

“Perish the thought,” Sherlock replies (although John is pretty sure that’s absolutely what he’d like to do). “The files, then?”

Molly sighs through her teeth and holds out her hand; Sherlock smiles warmly and places in it a sheet torn from a prescription pad he must have grabbed off one of the doctors in the hall, a list hastily scrawled and bullet-pointed. The suicide victims, presumably, or rather, “suicide” victims. Disappearing into the closet (file room?) for a minute or so, Molly emerges with four stuffed folders and shoves them into Sherlock’s arms.

“Be careful,” she implores, and he nods in a way that indicates he’s not paying even the slightest bit of attention. Already fanning through the folder on top of the pile, he wanders over to the counter where his riding crop sits and spreads out the rest of the papers, his eyes darting across them so rapidly John himself nearly gets a headache. Molly watches nervously with a hand on her hip, and John turns toward her with what he hopes is a friendly grin.

“Molly?”

Her eyes slide to him and she smiles back, though her body is still angled toward Sherlock across the room. John sticks his hand out anyway.

“Doctor John Watson,” he tries; maybe she’ll be more forgiving if she knows he’s a fellow medical professional. “I’m—his flatmate.” He nearly said “colleague,” really he did, but something stopped him; maybe it’s how deeply Sherlock is immersed in his work and how clearly removed from it John is. Molly looks baffled nonetheless, her attention focusing on him completely for the first time.

“His _flatmate,_ ” she echoes, and he nods, dropping his hand when the unspoken question suddenly clicks.

“ _Flatmate,_ ” he says again. “I’m an Army doctor, recently discharged; I was in need of some more…feasible lodgings than the bedsit I’d taken up in, and turns out Sherlock and I had an old friend in common.” He shrugs, trying to brush off her insinuation (it’s only natural). “Just good timing that I ran into him.”

“Oh—oh no—” she tries to backpedal immediately, raising her hands in front of her in a posture accidentally defensive, “I didn’t mean to imply…”

“Yes you did,” John says. “But don’t, don’t worry about it.” He spends all day dancing around proper protocol and polite language for the sociology of soulmates, it’s kind of nice to be able to tell someone to just fuck it all without having to worry about a client lodging a complaint with the hospital board, or worse, filing a civil suit; he’s heard the stories same as anyone and is rather proud of his own clean track record, even though all it amounts to is basically “nice paperwork, you replaceable cog.”

Molly smiles, relieved with just a hint of suspicion he doesn’t take personally.

“Sorry, it’s just…”

“I know.”

They share a brief, companionable silence; why they’re suddenly friends, John isn’t exactly sure, but he appreciates it.

“Molly Hooper,” she says, putting her own hand out. He takes it firmly.

“Pleasure.”

“John!”

John’s head jerks around at Sherlock’s exclamation, and Sherlock spins toward them with four sheets of paper clutched in one hand and a manic expression on his face. “John, we need to find the records!”

John leans on his cane, though it feels more demonstrative than necessary, and gestures to the papers. “What are those, then?”

“The _soulmate_ records, John, we need to find these people’s soulmates!”

“‘We’?”

But Sherlock is out the door, running at a pace the lingering doctors and mortuary attendants can’t possibly appreciate, so John offers Molly a distracted wave and heads after him as fast as he can (only hobbling a little bit, thank you very much). Sherlock hasn’t actually left the hospital, surprisingly enough, but slipped in behind some poor doctoral student to a faculty-only computer lab and commandeered one of the PCs. John hovers outside the door until his frustration prompts a nice young surgeon to hold the door open for him on her way out, and he stalks over to Sherlock’s terminal.

The page onscreen is part of a database in the DOH, and Sherlock is being asked if he’d like to make any edits; John has a fleeting vision of being imprisoned for incredibly illegal hacking and data manipulation before giving Sherlock the benefit of the doubt.

“There,” Sherlock hisses, glaring at the screen as though it’s personally wronged him. “Susanna Walker, unattended.”

John waits, but Sherlock just continues to glare.

“So?” he prompts.

“ _So,_ that information has been rewritten over the original entry,” Sherlock snaps. “The form was filled out in its entirety by ID number 24409-9532 _except for the soulmate status._ ”

John frowns. “The registry made a mistake?” Somehow it’s never occurred to him that that’s an option.

“No they did not make a mistake,” Sherlock mutters. “The data was changed on purpose almost two years later, look at the timestamps on the logins to this page.”

John does, and sure enough, Sherlock’s right; the majority of the form was updated about five years ago, after Ms. Walker’s partnership with…someone, name deleted, but two years later another user (ID number redacted somehow) accessed the form to change her soulmate status back to “Unattended.”

“How did nobody notice this?” John asks, his anger tied up between disbelief (well, not really, but wouldn’t that be nice) at the government’s carelessness, and bitterness that the crux of his own work, obtaining data to keep this fucking database current, is so easily overridden. Sherlock merely scoffs, as though this sort of thing is commonplace.

“Walker was a grocer, nobody important; there was no reason for her file to be flagged.”

“But why would her status be changed _to_ ‘unattended,’ unless someone had made a mistake?”

“A mistake that went unnoticed for two years until its inclusion could no longer be tolerated?” Sherlock asks sarcastically. “No, someone needed very much for it to appear to anyone who might go snooping as though Walker had never met her soulmate in the first place.”

John pauses to give himself a second to recollect. “How did she die?”

“Throat slit, the head left wrapped in linen,” Sherlock says distantly as he clicks around and types some things.

John does a literal double take, though Sherlock isn’t even sort of looking. “And they ruled it a suicide.”

“Supposedly she left a note.” Sherlock closes the browser and logs off the computer, walking out of the lab as John follows. “A forgery, obviously, but at the time no one was particularly interested in looking into the matter any further. Didn’t want to waste the resources. The linen is a bit of a stretch, but it is possible to slit one’s own throat, after all.”

Didn’t want to waste the resources, Jesus. A woman had been _murdered,_ and NSY let it slide because you never know when an MP’s lunch money will be stolen and they’ll be called to arms. This is the world in which you live, John Watson; welcome to the other side of the curtain.

“How about the others,” he asks tersely, “were they all the same?”

“Margaret Waters, nanny, starved,” Sherlock recites as he opens the hospital doors and leads them into the street. “Patrick O’Connor, customs officer, beaten with a crowbar and shot with a pistol; Thomas Arden, tailor, strangled with a towel and stabbed seven times with a French chef’s knife; Mary Dixon, bartender, poisoned, obviously, but she hasn’t been properly autopsied yet. Each DOH record was altered shortly before their death to reassign ‘unattended’ status and, except for Mary Dixon, each death was officially ruled a suicide.”

“So this is some kind of serial killing?”

Sherlock hums skeptically. “Motive’s still unclear.”

“The soulmate status,” John presses, “that’s gotta be the motive, doesn’t it? Somehow?”

“But _why?_ ” Sherlock returns, somewhere between talking to John and talking to himself and altogether making John feel like an eavesdropper. “All killed within the past four months, all given the appearance of suicide but none _convincingly_ because no one would bother to _check,_ the effort is unnecessary and the victims aren’t worth the _time;_ all had soulmates, all matched through the national registry so their DOH records had to be altered to reflect that fact but now it’s important that no one knows, no one thinks to look for the soulmates for answers, no one even knows who the soulmates _are_ but _why?_ Why go to all the trouble of doctoring the records when the crime scenes are so carelessly— _Oh!_ ” He rounds on John with fire in his eyes and firmly grabs his shoulders. “ _Oh!_ ”

Sherlock’s infectious excitement almost distracts John from the lack of conclusion, but his brain catches up quickly enough.

“ _What?_ ”

For a moment, a weirdly pleasing moment, Sherlock looks genuinely bewildered; it’s as though he forgot that he and John don’t share a brain, or even a single train of thought, by and large. Touching, in its way, if more than a little confusing (and kind of sad, though John’s not sure why). He shakes it off, though he doesn’t remove his hands from John’s arms as he rushes through his reasoning process.

“All peculiar deaths committed in flashy ways but the victims so ordinary that no one would give it a second thought if they presented the convenient excuse of a suicide note, write it off and toss it in a drawer, the killer’s free to go about his business without a fear of being caught so he can afford to be _dangerous,_ he can afford to _test his limits,_ killing in bigger and bolder ways to push the boundaries of what the police will believe and then he finds out that they’ll believe _anything_ when the answer’s given to them on a plate—suicide, it’s all suicide, victim left a note so that must be it.” Sherlock twists his face in displeasure, at the ineptitude of the police force or to reflect the killer’s mindset, John can’t tell, but he’s near the end now: “He’s pushed as far as he cares to go, he’s proven that they’re all idiots, that he’s _better,_ and now he’s ready for the end game, ready to up the stakes before he makes his final move, the kill he’s been building to all the while because now he knows he _can._ ”

John nods slowly; it makes sense, in a warped sort of way. “That’s why Dixon’s death was so obviously a murder; no way to pretend she’d killed herself, even if they wanted to.”

“He’s declaring his intentions.”

John grimaces. “But why _those_ victims?” he asks. “Why those people in particular, why go to all the trouble of covering up that they’d been matched? And why didn’t their soulmates try to find them, how did the killer know they wouldn’t?”

“Oh, John,” Sherlock says as though John’s somehow failed him. “Surely you don’t need me to tell you _that._ You were in the army all those years, you know the lengths to which people will go when they’re desperate.”

Though he knows he should be insulted, and he is, absolutely, John’s also a bit pleased that Sherlock is convinced he’ll be able to come to the answer on his own. Annoyed that he should assume it would be equally obvious to them both, but pleased in his faith in John’s abilities, however unearned.

When he does understand a moment later, he’s actually frustrated at himself for even needing the extra push because, yeah, the solution _is_ a bit obvious.

“The soulmates are the ones responsible?” he says, his rising intonation not because of self-doubt but because why would anyone _do_ that? “They’re hiring this lunatic to kill their partners?”

“So it would seem,” Sherlock says gleefully, and it should maybe be concerning that he’s so excited over a series of intricate and fairly twisted murders but John actually doesn’t care.

“That’s…that’s absurd. That’s sick.” That’s counterproductive, but the sentiment isn’t especially moving, by comparison.

“It’s _ingenious._ ”

John glances down at his watch. “It’s nearly one AM.”

Sherlock blinks owlishly, then straightens and releases his grip on John. “You need to sleep.”

“I do have work in the morning.”

“Can’t you sleep there?”

“Sherlock.”

Rolling his eyes, Sherlock leads John a couple of streets away to somehow hail probably the only taxi on the road at this hour. 20 minutes later, John is lying in his new bed at 221B and staring at the ceiling, trying to imagine how a man strangled with a towel and stabbed seven times with a French chef’s knife could possibly have been ruled a suicide, and hoping quite hard for a light load at the hospital tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Murder book” refers to the case file of a murder investigation; it includes crime scene photographs and sketches, autopsy and forensic reports, and other investigation notes, interviews, and data.


	5. a world where time is a sense

The hospital itself hasn’t changed in the slightest since John’s shift yesterday (was he really here so recently? Feels like it’s been an age), but the lemon cleaner-scented halls and thrilled new couples he’s become immune to in the past few months are no longer merely dreary but downright _suffocating._ The day’s workload isn’t remotely light, though he shouldn’t have dared hope for such a thing on a Friday, the day children are most likely to skip school and office drones are most likely to cut out early to bombard his office with requests for soulmate physicals and blood draws. It’s true; there have even been governmentally sponsored studies demonstrating it (“Therefore the DOH recommends that citizens schedule their clinic appointments during regular weekday hours to maximize efficiency!”), because a week’s worth of his office patient logs apparently couldn’t inform literally anyone of that very thing.

John checks the clock hanging above the doorframe. Somehow he’s missed his lunch break, though it’s not exactly surprising; the monotonous but constant drone of the day’s activity combined with his maybe two hours of sleep the previous night have put him in a detached state and given his activities an unnerving out-of-body quality. Plus Sarah announced this morning that she’s been promoted to the surgery proper (surprise surprise), so their office is going to be shorthanded for awhile and his mind is understandably distracted trying to figure out how to handle it.

A knock on the door takes a few seconds to register in his conscious mind, but Mary Morstan ushers in a nervous-looking teenager without waiting for his response. John plasters on his automatic customer service smile and gestures for the girl to sit.

“I’m Doctor Watson,” he says for the twentieth time today. “How can I help you?”

“Um.”

John clenches his fist in his lap; he doesn’t have the attention span for this not to go smoothly. “Are you here for a soulmate physical?”

“Er…yes.”

“Alright, I’m going to ask you some questions here and then we’ll have a brief exam and I’ll take your blood. So, your name is?”

“Um…”

 _Give me strength._ “Name?”

“E-Elizabeth.”

He waits, giving her a goading look, and she wrings her hands in front of her chest.

“Elizabeth Bowers.”

Halfway through penning her surname, his mobile chimes a text. Elizabeth looks startled, but that seems to be a status quo for her, so John finishes writing and checks his messages.

Baker Street.  
Come at once  
if convenient.  
SH

Oh thank god.

“Is it an emergency?” Elizabeth asks nervously. “I understand if you have to go.”

Signs of emotional abuse, he thinks, or maybe just an incredibly low sense of self-worth. Either way, he’s not the sort of doctor she ought to be seeing, which makes this all that much easier.

“We can finish up if you’ll help me get through these forms quickly,” he says. “Here, write in your address and insurance information and while you’re doing that I’ll just ask you some standard questions in the… Alright, has your blood been entered into the national database before?”

Taking the form and pen across the desk, Elizabeth bites her lip and offers a shallow nod as she begins to write. “When I was little, my mum—”

“To the best of your knowledge, has your blood ever been part of a screening panel?”

She looks downright terrified at the idea. “Oh, no, I shouldn’t think—”

“Have you ever attempted to register with the DOH as part of a soulmate match and been denied for any reason?”

For a second, he’s afraid she’s going to cry, but she just shakes her head. “I wanted— No.”

“Are you now or have you ever conducted an independent investigation to find your soulmate, including but not restricted to the employment of a nongovernmental private investigator or related agency?”

Her face flushes bright pink and he wishes she’d write faster. “I thought about it once—”

“So no?”

“No sir.”

_Ping._

If inconvenient,  
come anyway.  
SH

“Right,” John says with a smile he hopes Elizabeth Bowers doesn’t think has anything to do with her. “Okay, if you’re done there…?”

She makes a distressed noise and he sees that her letters have begun to run together, the pen pressed hard into the paper as she hunches her shoulders. Filling in the last box, she all but throws the form to him and he puts it aside as he unwraps a sterile pad.

“Roll up your sleeve please.”

The motions after that are quick and automatic—sterilize the skin, unwrap the hypodermic, pierce the vein, draw the blood, cap the vial, okay very good thanks for coming the laboratory should have your data installed sometime next week you’ll receive a phone call and an email, now please get out of my office I have places to be.

Maybe he doesn’t say that last part out loud, but the implication is clear enough.

He scrawls Elizabeth’s National Insurance number on a sticker and slaps it on the vial, dropping it into his outbox and her new patient folder into the filing cabinet before grabbing his Haversack and storming out the door.

“Tell Doctor Bell I’m sorry,” he says to Mary as he sweeps past her, “something came up, but thanks for covering for me.”

She sputters something and weakly tries to stop him, but the adrenaline shot of Sherlock’s text seems to have narrowed his focus to a single line leading straight back to 221B and he follows it without question. Something to _do,_ finally! Something more than biding time, something more than punching cards and watching clocks. He winds through the crowds to the nearest Tube station and, wonder of wonders, meets the train exactly on time; the ride to Baker Street passes in a blur and he’s at the front door without much memory of the journey (though, to be fair, some of that may be due to the sleep deprivation).

“Sherlock?” he calls out as he trots up the steps. “Everything alright?”

No response; that’s weird, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s a bit weird. Sherlock called him here, didn’t he? John didn’t misread the message?

He opens the door to their flat to complete stillness, the only sounds those leaking in through the closed windows. After a second he locates Sherlock, recumbent on the grey leather sofa with his hands pressed together in front of his face. Taking a hesitant step forward, it occurs to John that this is his home too, now, and he makes a bit more noise.

It doesn’t seem to make a difference.

“Sherlock?” he tries again. No response; he clears his throat. “Sherlock, something wrong?”

“Wrong,” he thinks he hears Sherlock echo, but it’s so soft it’s difficult to be sure. Suddenly Sherlock’s eyes open and he gasps in a breath, staring at the ceiling. “John.”

“Yeah, Sherlock, what is it?”

“Something’s _wrong._ ”

This is getting disturbing, and just a touch creepy. John walks the rest of the way to the sofa, pausing by Sherlock’s head, and bends down to pick up Sherlock’s phone when he sees that he’s almost stepped on it.

“ _What’s_ wrong?” he asks cautiously.

Sherlock’s eyes shut again, less meditative now than frustrated. “ _I don’t know._ ”

John looks around for some clue, some hint as to what’s been going on all day, what could’ve prompted this mental block, but nothing is out of place; at least, no more than normal (all two days of their living here). Instead he tries to think back to yesterday; whatever the subject is specifically, it’s probably related to their activities last night, and if it’s not, then John probably can’t help anyway. “Something to do with the case?” he asks, hoping for the best.

“ _Yes,_ ” Sherlock snaps. Then, just as shortly, “ _No._ ” He opens his eyes then and squints, puzzled. “ _Both._ The case but _not_ the case.”

The conversation is edging too far into _Inception_ territory for John’s liking; he goes to the reddish chair he claimed at their first visit and sits, leaning back and angling his head to look at Sherlock.

“You don’t say.”

“How could I have been so _blind?_ ” Sherlock chastises himself. “So _stupid!_ ”

John leans his elbow on one of the armrests and props his head against his closed fist.

“So the soulmates aren’t responsible for the deaths? They’re not hiring out this mastermind of yours?”

“Oh don’t be stupid, of course they are,” Sherlock dismisses. “Ask me something else.”

John offers a flat glare that Sherlock doesn’t notice and says the first thing that comes to mind: “Is it possible to commit suicide by stabbing yourself seven times?”

Not too surprisingly, Sherlock doesn’t answer right away; medically, John believes that it’s _possible,_ but as a detective, he’s not so sure, and Sherlock can’t have come across that situation too many times in the past. Closing his eyes, John feels himself begin to drop out of awareness and abruptly jerks up, jostling his shoulders and righting his posture; he fixes his blurred gaze back on Sherlock and waits for him to emerge from whatever semi-consciousness he’s laid himself in.

Light hits the windowpanes at a funny angle, and the curtains look like they’re on fire. It’s kind of neat.

God, it’s been a long day.

“Hopkins,” Sherlock says furiously, sitting up, and John shakes his head; what time is it? He nodded off, must’ve done, for how long? It’s dark out; is it still Friday? If he’s lucky, maybe.

“Hopkins?” he echoes as he tries to get his thoughts in order. What thoughts, he just wants to go to bed. No; this is important. Buck up, Captain.

“It’s so _obvious!_ ”

“Not to me it’s not.”

Offering him a frustrated sort of look, Sherlock rolls his eyes and twists around to sit on the sofa properly. “Detective Inspector Hopkins was assigned the Waters case purely by chance but he specifically requested to be assigned to O’Connor and Arden—Lestrade told me,” he says thinly at John’s quizzical expression, “he was supposed to work O’Connor but the Chief Superintendent pulled him at the last minute when Hopkins filed some paperwork or something, and then the man goes out of his way to specifically assign Lestrade to Dixon’s obvious murder _even though_ Hopkins would’ve been the obvious choice, considering the note on the door.”

John stares for a minute as he gathers his bearings.

“Ah,” he says. “Yeah, of course.”

“Hopkins’ name was in the autopsy reports.”

“I didn’t _read_ the autopsy reports.”

Sherlock’s face goes blank, so fast and so complete that it doesn’t register “deep thought” so much as “sudden death” and John experiences a misplaced moment of gut-wrenching terror before Sherlock mutters a distracted “Right” and blinks it away.

“You’ve left your cane,” he says then with a modest sort of indifference. What that has to do with the case, John has no idea, but he looks around for it anyway; surely he would’ve noticed walking down the pavement, on the stairs at the station, the stairs up to the flat, somewhere, he would’ve noticed it, he absolutely would have noticed.

Unless, of course, he was to be distracted by something. Say, a text message. Perhaps a request to come home with some urgency. A frustrated flatmate, maybe, demanding his assistance with a vague but troubling matter. John smirks.

“You do that on purpose?”

Sherlock grins back. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

John shakes his head with a chuckle. “Speaking of ‘no idea what you’re talking about,’” he echoes, refusing to be so easily distracted, “Hopkins and those autopsy reports, what was all that?”

“Oh, Hopkins is being blackmailed,” Sherlock says. “Or threatened, more likely, and he can’t be the only one.”

How exactly Sherlock made the connection from one to the other, John can’t see, but he attributes it less to his own density than to Sherlock’s familiarity with the “suicides,” and whatever intimate knowledge he has of the inner workings of NSY can’t hurt. Sherlock seems to consider the matter closed, however, and that’s just not fair.

“By…this mastermind,” John prods. “But you said the murders were to test the limits of what the police would believe. See how much he could get away with?”

Sherlock scowls, and John has a fleeting sense of his vanity and damaged pride (appealingly humanizing). “No,” Sherlock says, “not to test the limits of the stupidity of the police, but the limits of what his blackmail would buy him. How far his victims would let him go to keep…whatever they’re protecting safe. Their soulmates’ lives, most likely, that’s the sort of thing those idiots could be threatened with, something employees of NSY would all be sure to have in common.”

“These people are idiots for caring about their soulmates?”

“Idiots for letting their preoccupation stand in the way of their work, certainly.”

“I’d think their soulmates dying would stand in the way of their work plenty.”

That seems to stall Sherlock, at least for the moment; it’s understandable, based on what John’s been able to gather so far about the way Sherlock’s mind works. Logic over emotionality, reason free from passion. Makes all the sense in the world for a consulting detective.

“It’s possible,” Sherlock says eventually. “To kill yourself by stabbing seven times. Depending on the placement and depth of the wounds, and to an extent the type of knife, it can be done.”

Interesting, but the comment feels more like a distraction from the current conversation than an overdue answer to John’s original question; maybe that’s Sherlock’s defense mechanism, deflecting with unrelated information when he hits a stumbling block or thinks he’s wrong about something. Sounds like the sort of thing that could lead to a lot of frustrated misunderstandings; it’ll be something to get used to, but maybe they can find a happy compromise. A livable compromise. Any compromise.

The mobile on the table chimes a text message, and Sherlock gropes carelessly on the floor before snatching it off the table with a grimace and flicking the screen.

“Molly,” he says. “She’s begun to autopsy Dixon’s body, says the poisoning is a combination of arsenic and strychnine.”

John nods; unusual, but they’d be quite potent in tandem. “That tell you anything useful?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “The specifics of the cause of death are immaterial, merely a point of interest. You noticed the bruising around her neck, most likely due to asphyxiation caused by muscle spasms from the strychnine.”

“Interesting, arsenic and strychnine,” John reflects. “Muscles atrophy and spasm at the same time.”

Sherlock shrugs. “It’s an old form of rat poison, he was probably just feeling cheeky.”

“Oh, right, of course.”

The silence that follows is difficult to classify; John wants to call it awkward, but it’s not, really. He’s as much at ease with Sherlock as he’s ever been ( _three days_ ), and it’s as though they’re sharing some secret joke, saying something they shouldn’t be, talking out of turn. It’s maybe the most fun he’s had with anyone in a long time, and he can’t help but laugh a little. Sherlock blinks rapidly, resetting his focus, and smiles.

“Well,” John says, “I’m off. To bed,” he clarifies at Sherlock’s alarmed glare. “You’ll have this all solved by morning, then?”

Sherlock rolls over and lies back on the sofa, closing his eyes and pressing his hands together in front of his face; it’s as though the last few hours never happened. John shakes his head.

“Good luck.”

Sherlock glowers.


	6. a world in which everyone is alone

John falls asleep quickly and wakes with a start without any idea of where he is.

The ground under their feet is flat, the mountains far off and hazy, no cover at all. No trees, no buildings, not around here. Hiking, that’s right, that’s what they’re doing, crossing the terrain. Migratory. Paul and West march up front; their packs might as well be weightless for how easily they sling them around, the bastards. Fredrich lags behind as usual, the bastard. The air’s gritty, heavy, sepia and greyscale, everything blurred and dark.

Nighttime, that’s nice. It’s cooler at night, a little bit, not enough to get rid of the watery mirages in the road but just enough to make a difference, better for long travel like this. Where are they even going? Who fuckin’ knows, A to B, those were the instructions. Meet me at the rendezvous point, 0600 hours. Left, left, left right left. Nah, no one around to show off, fall in line for; right now it’s all just one foot in front of the other, isn’t it. Sand in their mouths, dirt in their eyes. It’s all fine.

Hey Cap, you hear that?

Wait wait, shit, was that a jeep—what’s that, what, a flash, bright, sudden, streaking across the sky—delay, delay, a long whistle, a bomb, lads, a bomb, shit shit shit get down, Stan, get down—!

 _Ratatatata_ out of nowhere bursting over the horizon they may as well have brought water pistols to a firefight _get down Stan!_ and John rolls, pulls Fredrich by the straps of his pack, grapples around for his rifle, _an ecstasy of fumbling,_ bright lights, reflective glare, _ratatatata!_

 _They got me in the legs, Doc!_ Crying, are you crying, fantastic, are you a child? _I’m a goner, don’t worry about it!_ Christ what the fuck are you talking about Paul, _ratatatata_ here it’s a tourniquet here take my jacket here take my helmet _ratatatata_ here take my gun

_We’re in for it now!_

Shut up West, no we’re not (yes we are), not if I can help it!

_Open fire!_

_Shit—!_

John wakes quickly with a gasp and a jolt and slams the side of his head against the wall.

He breathes heavily and doesn’t feel the ache in his skull for another minute or so. His shirt is sweat-soaked at his chest and the small of his back and the sheets are damp as well; there’s a pillow on the floor and another, still on the bed, with its case on only halfway. Suddenly, frantically, he pats himself down—not bleeding, all limbs and extremities present and accounted for, bones unbroken (far as he can tell for now), but it’s dark, it’s dark, and was that a whistle off in the distance there? Shit, was that a whistle? Is that a bomb?

No, it’s not. It’s not. It’s not.

Breath, Watson.

Alright. You're alright. It’s alright.

It’s music.

Music?

_How do you feel about the violin?_

Oh, right. Of course. Of course. Of course.

Music?

Something by Mendelssohn. Yes, he’s heard this one before. Couldn’t name it if you put a gun to his head (ha, ha).

John tries to take a deep breath and can’t; he’d suffocate, definitely, can’t have that. Instead he tries to breathe evenly, tries to breathe along with the music, but that’ll never work, the runs are much too long. Rhythmic, then, count them off: one, two, one, two, one, two.

His eyes burn, his cheekbones are sore; crying, crying, naturally. His next breath is a shuddering inhale, rattling and loud. The music plays a little louder, sounds like, and he presses his face into his hands. It’s been awhile.

His head hurts.

\---

It’s nearly 9:45 when John hauls himself out of bed, pulling on jeans and a jumper and pinching the bridge of his nose as he walks downstairs with heavy steps, feeling the impact in his knees. Thank god it’s Saturday, that’s all there is to say about that; he doesn’t envy the clinicians on weekend shifts. They may work fewer days, but he’s seen more than a few serving four or five clients at one time, their loads get so heavy. Poor guys.

Midmorning light makes the flat look a little dingy, somehow; a violin case lies under the window and for a second he considers bringing it up, maybe just a quick “Thank you,” out of context. By the time he’s made it to the kitchen, he’s reconsidered. Let’s leave that one alone for now, shall we? Yeah, yeah, it’s alright.

When he emerges with a piece of dry toast and not much appetite for it, it occurs to him that not only is Sherlock exactly where John left him last night, but he’s wearing the same clothes he was yesterday. Actually, make that two days; he’s exchanged the black suit jacket for a blue silk dressing gown in between the time John went to bed and now, but the pants are the same, and the black button-front shirt as well. Sherlock’s clothes are all so fine that he must care for them pretty well, he wouldn’t _sleep_ in them, but is it really possible he’s been awake for three days straight? The medic in John is horrified at the thought, but the rest of him understands the fit.

Doesn’t mean he’s not going to try to do something about it.

“How long have you been up?”

“Don’t know.”

Why would he.

“Made any progress?”

“Naturally.”

John expected that to go a little differently, but if Sherlock has actually made progress despite his probably substantial sleep deprivation… No, no, he’s still a human being and he still needs to rest, no matter how extraordinary he thinks himself. And seems to others.

“Planning on getting to bed anytime this week?”

“Don’t be dull, John. Sleep is _boring._ ”

Of course it is. Cut to the chase, then.

“So you’ve figured out who the culprit is?”

“What?” Sherlock looks truly baffled, and John frowns; if not that, then what? “How would I have done that?”

John waits, but Sherlock seems to think he’s said quite enough; John clears his throat pointedly and Sherlock huffs, dropping his shoulders even though he’s still lying down.

“This _case,_ ” he cries. “I’ve had a call from Lestrade, finally, he’s shed some light on a few things. Not many, of course, you know how he is, but it’s a start.”

“I…don’t, really,” John mutters, “but that’s…good. That’s good, isn’t it? What’s he let you in on?”

“He told me to _drop_ the case.”

“ _What?_ ”

Sherlock flops his head to the side and looks at him evenly. “He told me, to _drop,_ the _case._ ”

John breathes out through his nose with a little huff. “And how is that progress, exactly?”

“Really, John.” Sherlock somehow stands without properly sitting up first, stepping on the table rather than walking around, and moves easily into John’s personal space. “Two days ago he comes here begging us to take up a case his department’s been mishandling for months and now that it’s finally become interesting he wants us to drop it? Not just ‘wants,’ either, that was definitely an order.”

“Meaning…?”

The now-familiar glint in Sherlock’s eyes shines for another moment before his face falls, the expression caught somewhere between scorn and dread. John fears for the direction his life’s track is about to turn, and Sherlock takes a weary breath before his predictably inscrutable answer:

“Mycroft.”

John searches his memory for any mention of the word in his conversations with Sherlock—had somebody said something at the crime scene the other day?—and comes up short. “Is it a…” Food? Virus? Computer system? “No, I give up, what’s that?”

Sherlock averts his gaze and collapses into the grey leather chair opposite John’s quilted red one. “My brother.”

John nods sagely before the words catch up with him. “Hang on,” he says, waving his hand toward Sherlock and sitting in the red chair; “you have a brother?”

Sherlock makes a put-upon little grunting noise and scowls at the floor, and John can’t help a little chuckle.

“Your brother’s got you pulled from this case?” he asks with a smirk. “Why on earth would he do that? Come to it, _how_ did he do that? Is he a Superintendent or something?”

“Hardly,” Sherlock grouses. “He _is_ the British government, never let him tell you otherwise, but he doesn’t need all that to get Lestrade to fire me.”

John tries to wait him out, but he knows from the start that it won’t work and gives in quickly. “Because…”

Sherlock offers another withering glance, and John leans back as it clicks. “Wait—are they _soulmates?_ ”

“Don’t tell,” Sherlock says drily.

John tries to quiet his incredulous laugh with a moderate amount of success. It makes all the sense in the world; it explains Lestrade’s familiarity with Sherlock, his willingness to let him into crime scenes—that might just be because of Sherlock’s incredible prowess, actually, but the family connection can’t hurt—and come to think of it, Sherlock and Lestrade treated each other rather like brothers as well, more than cooperating professionals. If Mycroft is, as Sherlock claims, essentially the whole of the British government, then his official title, whatever it is, must be extremely highly ranked, so he and Lestrade must’ve been paired for, well, a long time; Lestrade and Sherlock have probably known each other for years. Although, if all that’s the case…

“But it can’t be a _secret._ ”

Sherlock frowns contemplatively, and John has the sense that he’s done something quite surprising but has no idea what it could’ve been. “It’s highly classified,” Sherlock says slowly. “A fairly renowned practice in the most influential circles, did you really not know?”

Drumming his fingers on the armrests, John tenses his jaw; this feels like a culture clash, and he gets quite enough of that at work from some of his patients. “I guess they pull it off pretty well.”

“It’s been that way for ages,” Sherlock explains with very little of the arrogance John expected. “Individuals in sensitive and powerful positions—not royalty or such things, of course, it would be much too complex and the country tends to rely on the pomp and romanticism, for some reason, but extremely high-end government officials, intelligence agents, military icons, that sort of thing, they find their soulmates in order to ascend the scaffold of their chosen organization and then the record is expunged when it becomes a liability. It’s all covered up with sham marriages,” he finishes scornfully, “people partnering solely for love and keeping their soulmates on retainer, all the while publicly declaring that they’ve married their matches, the whole arrangement is stupidly messy.”

As if the government isn’t corrupt enough as it stands, but they’ve already gone over that quite enough with this case. “You think marrying for love makes it a sham?” John asks instead, not entirely convinced he disagrees but still wanting to put up some kind of fight.

“As far as the administration’s concerned,” Sherlock counters, and John must concede that that’s true. “Anyway there aren’t many people who warrant such extreme measures, and I…suppose it’s rather the point that it’s not the sort of thing that would occur to the layman.”

“Thanks, Sherlock, thanks a lot.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “I didn’t mean it like _that._ ”

Before he can formulate a proper response, John hears the door downstairs open and close. Mrs. Hudson says something, impossible to hear exactly what, and then the sound of footsteps up the stairs; Sherlock stands and gathers his violin from its case, plucking idly at the strings as he looks out the window.

John watches and waits.

The door opens without any introductory knocking and a terribly official-looking man in a dark grey three piece suit walks in, an umbrella hanging from his arm despite the fact that it’s very much not raining out. Sherlock doesn’t acknowledge him, but the man smiles and John feels a little ill.

“From now on, you will stay out of this,” the man says in lieu of any sort of introduction. Turning just his head, Sherlock narrows his eyes and parts his lips, somehow de-aging himself about five years.

“Oh, will I?”

“I’m afraid I really must insist, Sherlock,” he says, his expression remaining fixed as his identity becomes instantly, painfully obvious. “I can’t have you, simply running about and treating this case as some sort of _game._ ”

“Oh please,” Sherlock snaps, looking out the window again; “you were the one so keen to get me involved in the first place and now you’re trying to cut me off just as it’s getting really _good._ ”

“Spotted that, did you?”

“And after you’d gone to absolutely no lengths to hide it.”

“Hang, hang on,” John interrupts, turning in his seat and raising his hand. “Mycroft Holmes, I’m assuming?”

“Oh, very good, John,” Mycroft says loftily. “A pleasure, I’m sure.”

John looks to Sherlock, who’s put the violin away and has a little smirk on, and then back to Mycroft with some hesitancy. “Yeah, likewise. So why exactly are you taking Sherlock off of this case? Your—partner sure seemed to want him involved when he came round the other day.”

“Ah,” Mycroft says as his grin widens, “you’ve met Gregory. That will save us some time.”

John looks between the Holmes brothers again, but Sherlock doesn’t demonstrate any acknowledgement of his discomfort. “Right,” he hedges, “so this case, what’s… What exactly is going on, somebody want to clue me in?”

“Oh yes, Mycroft,” Sherlock says coolly, “ _do._ ”

Mycroft sighs through pursed lips, looking as though that’s absolutely the last thing he’d like. John’s a bit pleased to have put him in that position.

“The involvement in this case of certain individuals has been made clear since the body of Miss Dixon was discovered,” Mycroft says carefully, holding John’s gaze as he does. “Under normal circumstances it would be our prerogative to let them conduct their business as they please, but somewhat… _unusual_ motivations appear to be involved in this instance, and therefore it is in all of our best interests to keep the investigation as _clandestine_ as possible. It wouldn’t do to have anyone dirtying their hands with it who wasn’t absolutely _necessary._ ”

John nods slowly without breaking eye contact. “So…basically there’s some lunatic, who you’ve known about for ages, running around killing people more or less with your permission,” he summarizes, “but now you’ve decided enough is enough because he’s explained _why_ he’s doing it and it’s a bit weirder than you’d expected.”

For some reason Mycroft glares at Sherlock, who finally turns away from the window and smiles back as cheekily as possible.

“That’s terrible,” John says.

“That’s government,” Mycroft retorts.

“ _That’s_ terrible.”

Mycroft doesn’t have much of a response to that, but Sherlock’s not-remotely-smothered laughter alleviates John’s fear that he’s about to get himself thrown in some secret underground political prison. One awkward silence later, Mycroft clears his throat and fondles his umbrella handle.

“Well, John, I won’t try to convince you that our methods are entirely above board in all arenas, but then,” he offers a snide smile, “the world at large is rather like a battlefield, wouldn’t you agree; I’m sure you’re familiar with the difficultly of the decisions we’re forced to make for the greater good.”

The statement blindsides John in its blatancy, in its _audacity,_ but Sherlock invades Mycroft’s space so efficiently and so thoroughly that he may as well have been expecting it (so maybe he was). There’s a frigid rage in his eyes and his bearing that John hasn’t seen before in anyone, ever, and though he knows it isn’t directed at him (pretty certain), it’s still rather frightening.

“Get out of my flat,” Sherlock hisses, the words so dripping with venom that they take on an unfamiliar sort of accent.

For just an instant, Mycroft’s lips part a bit and his forehead wrinkles, but he recovers quickly enough, puffing his chest and trying to stare his brother down; Sherlock won’t be cowed, though, and eventually Mycroft bows his head a few degrees and strolls to the door only to take his pause there.

“I hope you can understand that all of this is being done for your benefit,” he says lazily. “ _Brother mine._ ”

“Get _out!_ ”

Mycroft smiles, actually _smiles,_ and closes the door behind himself. Sherlock’s breathing is heavy and his eyes wild, the dressing gown skewed toward the right along the line of his shoulders, and John wonders if maybe he should say something.

Before he decides either way, Sherlock makes a guttural groaning noise and rights his robe with a harsh yank, falling into his chair to stare at the ceiling. John gives him a beat and then clears his throat.

“So,” he says, too cheerful but figuring Sherlock will understand, “what was all that about?”

“Oh, he’s a rubbish big brother,” Sherlock drawls.

“Yeah but what did _I_ ever do to him?” John presses, not wanting to make their family business about himself but feeling so slighted that he can’t help it. “I didn’t even know you _had_ a brother until…what, twenty minutes ago.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Sherlock rights his head and looks across at John, “he’s like a feral cat, he really is, I don’t know how Lestrade puts up with it. He was just trying to put you in your place.”

John stands and clenches his fists, sitting back down almost immediately and throwing his shoulders back as he does. “In my place,” he grits out. “In my _place?_ ”

As he expected, Sherlock just waves him off. “He thinks far too highly of himself, don’t worry about it.”

“And just where does he think my _place_ is, exactly?”

“Really, John.” This time it’s with a note of…not pleading, exactly, but some kind of appeal, a little bit of supplication, that takes John aback and makes him think twice about the whole exchange. “He needs to be the supreme commander all the time, he gets hideously carried away.”

John’s run into that type often enough, definitely; the army was full of them, for one. He leans back, trying to affect relaxation (this is his home, after all), and Sherlock crosses his legs.

“I wouldn’t think you’d take too well to that,” John deflects. Sherlock hums noncommittally.

“Truthfully, I blame our parents.”

(Let’s not talk about this right now.)

(Let’s not talk about this ever.)

John nods because he appreciates the effort, smiles because he’s supposed to. Clenches and unclenches his fist because _Well, now what._

“Get out.”

John startles a little. “What?”

Sherlock waves his hand. “I need to go to my mind palace.”

“To your…”

“ _Mind palace,_ John,” Sherlock pronounces, pressing his index fingers to his temples, “my _mind palace._ ”

“Okay, you know that’s not actually explaining anything to me?”

“Where I store all the information that’s relevant to anything worth knowing.”

John looks around the room for any sort of clue to Sherlock’s particular brand of clarification, not exactly expecting it to help (it doesn’t). “So, your brain?” he tries, to Sherlock’s apparent frustration.

“It’s a memory technique supposedly invented by Simonides of Ceos in the fifth century,” he says tersely, “go look it up if you like.”

“And in order for it to work, I have to leave.”

“It requires silence.”

Of course it does, why wouldn’t it. John is too much in the dark to respond properly, anyway, only guessing at what’s running through Sherlock’s mind; maybe the visit from Mycroft put Sherlock on edge even more than he is usually. Maybe Sherlock’s got some revelation about the case dancing at the very edge of his thoughts and he needs to draw it out properly. Maybe he’s just being an annoying dick. (Probably that’s it.) Regardless of the reason, John thinks, it actually might not be a bad idea to seek some privacy at the moment; he could use the time to himself to sort out his reaction to Mycroft’s…existence, and organize his thoughts around the new information he provided about the case, not to mention society at large.

Maybe he’ll check YouTube for something by Mendelssohn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The piece Sherlock plays after John's nightmare (minus the piano): [Song without words No. 7 In E Flat Major, Op. 30, No. 1 (Arr. For Violin And Piano)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEealgOO3ik)


	7. a world of unexpected visions

John’s laptop rests on his desk under the window. He opens it, turns it on, and then sits on his bed all the way across the room, looking at the little screen without much idea of what’s there.

Not Mendelssohn. It’s time to concentrate.

So Sherlock has a brother.

Bravo, Dr. Watson, have a gold star.

Great start. John lies back with his hands under his head and stares up at the ceiling. Sherlock and Mycroft don’t seem to get along, but it’s not the sort of distance between him and Harry, the sort of thing created in years of disappointments and broken promises and irrational blame. It’s a distance that comes between two people who are fundamentally very similar, but who branched off from one another at some point in the past and never took the time to reconcile their differences. Mycroft did make a point of saying he was acting in Sherlock’s best interest, or trying to, so he must care about his brother at least a little. And Sherlock seemed content to banter with Mycroft while he was visiting, so…there’s that.

Fine, well, John’s not a relationship counselor and the Holmes family is probably as functional as it’s ever going to be.

Alright, so, what do we know? Mycroft Holmes, British Government, specifically requested that his soulmate (husband?) Gregory Lestrade, Detective Inspector, enlist the help of Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, investigating the death (murder, not suicide) of Mary Dixon, former bartender (poisoned). Two days after Sherlock was assigned to the case, Mycroft asked (insisted?) that Lestrade order Sherlock to stop investigating because he’d come to learn that the murderer’s motives are “unusual.” Never mind the fact that Mycroft’s apparently known the identity of the murderer the whole time and, with the full support of the rest of the government, done nothing about it, or the fact that there are apparently a bunch of people who regularly receive the same special treatment, just because their victims are below some arbitrary threshold on the societal hierarchy, because the government can make those distinctions as they please, evidently.

Focus, John, focus. The case.

Right. John narrows his eyes and twists his lips. Assuming Mycroft does care about Sherlock, which seems likely, is it possible that he’s trying to protect him? So does that mean the murderer is targeting Sherlock? But that doesn’t make any sense; the murders so far have all, according to Sherlock and the DOH records, been about people getting rid of their soulmates, for some reason, and Sherlock is still unattended. Is the murderer trying to stop Sherlock from finding his soulmate, is that all this is? Some petty jealous rage thing? A vengeful ex-lover? Of course, that would require Sherlock having an ex-lover, which seems unlikely. Creepy stalker? Obsessive fan? Based on Sherlock’s behavior at the crime scene, and the probable amount of time Mycroft and Lestrade have been matched and more or less co-assigning him cases, Sherlock must’ve worked for NSY dozens or hundreds of times; it’s possible he’s picked up a follower or two, even if he doesn’t go out of his way to publicize himself.

Okay, so that’s one possibility: Sherlock has a stalker who’s trying to stop him from meeting his soulmate or forming a non-soulmate but committed attachment, most likely because they want to be with him. But that’s only one option, and the more John thinks it over, the bigger the holes seem to grow; for instance, if this person is so obsessed with Sherlock, why have they never contacted him before? It’s nearly accidental that Sherlock is even on the case, so how would they know that he would become involved?

If Sherlock isn’t the target, though, then who? He doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends, as far as John can tell, but it must be tied to him in some way or Mycroft wouldn’t have intervened the way he did. Groping around his bedside table, John finds his way into a drawer and pulls out a scrap of paper and a pen. “Mrs. Hudson,” he scrawls, pressing the paper to the wall for support. But no, she’s just a landlady and doesn’t seem too concerned with her own soulmate, so why all the lead-up murders? Besides, Sherlock might have a fit, but in the long run, her death wouldn’t register highly on the NSY radar; it would be easy for the murderer to cover up, or bribe away. He crosses out her name.

Molly Hooper, from the morgue? John doesn’t know if she has her soulmate or not, but what benefit would it serve the murderer to kill her? Sherlock seems to know her well enough, so they’ve worked together before, but it’s not as though there aren’t other morticians at the hospital. Cross it off.

Lestrade? Sure, speaking of Sherlock’s personal relationships, he’d be one of the most likely—John scribbles a quick circle around the name—but he seems content enough with his match, or hell, even happy with it; it’s not as though he and John have ever discussed the matter. Besides, if he had any intention of paying this assassin to off Mycroft and Mycroft knew about it, Lestrade and any traces or records of him would vanish off the face of the Earth, or at least that was the impression Mycroft gave. Cross it off.

John himself? No, they haven’t known each other nearly long enough, and he’s not looking for his soulmate, if he hasn’t given up on the idea entirely (still not sure). John doesn’t even bother to write it down.

Who else does Sherlock even _know?_

Well, John thinks, sliding one hand to his forehead and massaging right above his brow line, technically there’s Mycroft; he writes the name carefully, each letter distinct. If the murderer has infiltrated the police force at some pretty high levels, there’s no telling what other institutions he has under his belt; the government, for instance. National politics, international relations, whatever. Of course, John’s already determined that Lestrade wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to hire someone to kill Mycroft, so that cancels out the embittered soulmate angle.

But hang on. Just the other day, Sherlock said this lunatic was “declaring his intentions” with Dixon’s murder; is it possible his next target isn’t a hire? He’s picked someone out for his own benefit?

John fidgets uncomfortably and leans back against the headboard. _Is_ Mycroft the target? Granted, he just met the guy, and that didn’t even go especially well, but…he’s Sherlock’s brother. He was probably just trying to protect Sherlock in his own warped way. Anyway, if he was snuffed out, how would Sherlock take it? He’d be a wreck. Actually, John thinks, he doesn’t have much ground to make that assessment, but somehow, somehow it feels right. Mycroft goes to Sherlock for help with tough cases, or at least has other people do it for him, and Sherlock helps out some if not all of the time (probably not _all_ the time), so the animosity can’t be too bad; sure, they bickered when Mycroft first showed up, but nothing really nasty.

Well, wait.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, John puts his hands on his knees and presses his shoulder blades together, the paper wrinkling under his palm. Sherlock lashed out at his brother, hard, when Mycroft baited John, and there’s no getting around it. But _why?_ Does Sherlock have some weird possessiveness streak John didn’t know about? Moreover, if that’s the case, does he consider John somehow his _property?_ Big brother’s not getting this one, that’s for sure, or something like that?

No. No, no, Sherlock wouldn’t do that. (Would he?) No, he’s imperious, and he’s arrogant, and he’s pompous and rude and all of that, but he wouldn’t dehumanize John, wouldn’t turn him into some kind of artifact. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t. John won’t believe it.

It was just that John was too flustered to immediately leap to his own defense; does Sherlock think he’s weak? That wasn’t the reason for his silence, no, he was just so surprised. But Sherlock might have gotten the wrong impression, maybe. On the other hand, when they first met, he immediately identified John as a soldier (a good one, thanks), and he did ask if John wanted to come along with him to get into trouble, so. Maybe not.

So what’s left, then? Was it affection? Sherlock defending him not as an underling or an object but as a friend? That’s…possible. If that was the reason, it might’ve been a bit of an overreaction, but then, Sherlock’s emotions don’t seem to tend toward subtlety.

Or he could just _ask_ Sherlock.

Right, because that would end well.

“ _John!_ ”

John sniffs sharply and takes a deep breath.

This had better be about the case.

\---

Sherlock is on the sofa, again, with his hands pressed together in front of his face, again, and his eyes closed, again. He doesn’t move at all when John opens the door, doesn’t acknowledge John warily nearing the sofa, doesn’t seem to hear John’s put-upon sigh.

“You figure something out?” John asks. Sherlock’s eyes snap open as though the words held some secret cue he was waiting for and his gaze darts to John, who’s standing with his weight shifted mostly toward his right.

“Overcompensating,” Sherlock says flatly. John looks down at himself and frowns.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re overcompensating for that stupid limp you used to have,” Sherlock elaborates. “Putting all your weight on your so-called ‘bad’ leg instead of standing evenly or weighted toward the left.”

Choosing to ignore the categorization of his “stupid” condition, John pointedly balances his stance. “I meant about the case.”

Sherlock clicks his tongue and looks away. “Not thinking about the case.”

The conversation is going to be a heavy one, or at least Sherlock seems to think it is. John cautiously sits in his chair and twists a bit to face Sherlock more easily. “Why?”

“Because I need to know _why_ I _can’t_ think about the case!”

Right; does that make any sense? Even by Sherlock standards? John looks thoughtfully out the window. No, no, it really doesn’t.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s _you._ ”

“ _What?_ ”

Sherlock stands and begins pacing, gesturing sharply with his hands as though he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. “I was _right_ that the killer used Mary Dixon’s death to declare his intentions to make his next kill an advantageous one from his personal perspective rather than another frivolous hired job but I was _wrong_ about the _motive._ I was right in deducing that he had taken advantage of the idiocy rampant in New Scotland Yard but I was _wrong_ in deducing _how._ ”

“But is that important, though?” John tries to placate. “If you were right about the end game, does it matter if you missed a few steps along the way?”

“Of _course_ it matters!” Sherlock rages. “I must have a solid foundation on which to build my conclusion or risk it— _collapsing_ at the first sign of contrast. But because the conclusion was _correct,_ I _ignored_ the details—details are _crucial,_ John, so many people notice only the obvious things and that is their downfall but I, I know better and yet _this_ time I fell victim to that most ordinary of pitfalls but _why?_ ”

“Maybe because you’ve been awake for three days straight,” John can’t resist putting in. Sherlock dismisses the idea out of hand.

“No, it’s because of _you._ ”

Shit, this _is_ going to be heavy. John even suspects he knows what Sherlock is leading up to, or at the very least knows the overarching subject, and it won’t be a comfortable area for either of them.

“Did I…do something? To interrupt your, er, process?” he asks. “I didn’t mean to, if I did, sorry about that.”

“Not something you _did,_ John, something you _are._ ” Sherlock flops back onto the sofa and shoves his hands into his hair. “Damn Mycroft, he did that on purpose.”

Now hold on just a second.

“Sherlock,” John warns, “if you’re going where I think you are, I’d really rather not bring your brother in on it as well, if it’s all the same to you.”

Sherlock raises his hands over his head and squints at them. “Where do you think I’m going, John?”

Damn, damn, damn…

Quick on your feet, Watson. Tactical maneuvers, don’t dive in headfirst.

“Are you kicking me out?”

Without lowering his hands, Sherlock turns his head and offers John the most incredulous of expressions. “Why on Earth would I do that? You think I want to start looking for a new flatmate all over again after it took such a long time to find _you?_ ”

“Well, if I’m getting in the way of your deductions, you know, your work…”

“Not ‘getting in the way,’ John,” Sherlock says exasperatedly, “you’re speeding them _up._ You’re my, my, my conductor of light, clearing away all the shadows, all the frivolous distractions and making everything so _obvious._ ”

“I’m…sorry?”

“You’re making me _jump to conclusions!_ ”

“Uh-huh.”

Sherlock makes a disgusted noise and drops his hands, the left one falling down to the floor. “I need to completely restructure my mind palace around _you,_ to accommodate _you,_ I don’t have _time_ for this!”

It doesn’t seem that Sherlock is beating round the bush so much as assuming that actually stating his thesis is unnecessary, as though John ought to know it merely by virtue of its existence, but if they are, in fact, not on the same page, it’s going to cause quite a few problems in a very short time. Taking a breath, thinking about Sherlock’s deductions running on high when he’s around, thinking about the vague text message that sent him sprinting back to Baker Street in the middle of a workday, thinking about Sherlock immediately referring to them as “we” and “us,” thinking about his stupid limp, thinking about the way they just _fit,_ John squares his shoulders (overkill) and forces the words out:

“Sherlock, are we soulmates?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer right away, and John tries to be patient, waiting, watching, silent.

It’s agonizing.

He must be doing this on purpose.

John clenches his fists, nails digging into his palms. _Come on, come on._ He fucked up, he fucked up, Sherlock will never look at him the same way again, Sherlock will want him gone, he’ll have to move back to the bedsit, he’ll have to move out of London, he’ll have to find a new job, he’ll have to reenlist, _beg_ them to take him back, _beg_ them.

Wow, okay, stop it. It’s only been a few seconds, don’t be melodramatic. Or insane.

John bites his tongue. Sherlock frowns.

“Impossible to know for sure without the proper bloodwork, John, you of all people should know that.”

That absolute dickhead.

“Sherlock,” John says in the most tolerant tone he can muster, “if you think, that I don’t know that you can figure out whether we’re soulmates just by—watching which way I turn in my chair, or, counting the number of seconds it took me to respond after you called me downstairs, or any one of five thousand other _things_ I’ve done in the past few days, then we’re going to have to have a very serious discussion about just how _stupid_ you think I _am._ ”

Sherlock huffs a breath, closing his eyes and tilting his head back; he really is quite like a child at times.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up,” he says.

“Get my— Sherlock, come on,” John presses, “when we first met, practically, you deduced that I’d stopped looking for my soulmate because I thought the whole exercise was pointless, and now you’re saying you don’t want to tell me whether or not we’re soulmates because I might what, be disappointed?” He coughs a hollow laugh and shrugs exaggeratedly, his impatience rising by degrees. “Disappointed in _what?_ ”

“Disappointed that you _have_ a soulmate,” Sherlock bites out. “Disappointed that you’ve _found_ me, that now you’re supposed to have a _relationship_ with me, that you’re supposed to make me _better_ at _everything,_ that people will pile expectations on you and everyone will look at you differently, that your entire life will change because of something utterly out of your control.” He sighs gratingly and John’s heart twinges; Sherlock can really cut to the bone when he wants to, digging up John’s need to feel useful and stabbing him with it now, of all times.

Of course, the situation has two sides to it; was Sherlock hoping for something better, something more from his own soulmate? It happens, of course, it happens all the time; furious clients storm the clinic and demand that their blood be redrawn, their samples retested because surely _this_ isn’t what’s meant for me, surely _this_ isn’t where I’m supposed to end up. Not with _him,_ not with _her._

Well. There might be time for all that later, but for right now, they have work to do: There’s a case on, and Sherlock might be in danger, and he’s pouting and being generally uncooperative, and that won’t do at all.

“I’m not,” John says. Sherlock glances over skeptically and he smirks a bit. “I’m really not. You were right, of course, I’d given up on searching, and I guess I didn’t think I’d ever meet anyone, but I’m not disappointed now that I have.” The last few minutes of Sherlock’s ranting speed through his mind and he pauses, raising his hands as if it’ll stop the flow of action (or time). “I have, haven’t I? I mean. You are. Right?”

Sherlock’s stare turns withering in the span of a second, and John drops his hands with mild exasperation. “Right. Yeah. Thanks for clearing that up.” He waits for Sherlock’s response, but none seems forthcoming, verbal or otherwise; fine, then, that’s just fine, John, you’re a man of action. Carry on.

“You said you needed to reorganize your…mind palace, after all this.”

“It’s not that simple.”

Shaking his head, John goes to the opposite end of the sofa; Sherlock reflexively bends his knees up and John sits in the vacated space.

“How can I help?”


	8. a world where time is a quality

As it happens, a lot of helping Sherlock reorganize his mind palace involves sitting quietly and trying not to move around too much. Sherlock assured him before they began that that was all he would need, but John’s skin itches in a way he can’t scratch, all his instincts urging him to do something, say something, have an impact, make a difference. The first time he tried (“Sherlock, you okay?”), Sherlock gasped so sharply it sounded like hyperventilating and then chastised him for interrupting, and the second (“Do you need anything?”), he ignored the question entirely, or didn’t even hear it.

John’s right foot is falling asleep and he’d like a glass of water.

Instead, he looks over at Sherlock.

Except for his raised hands, steepled in front of his face, he looks like he’s asleep: mostly still with the occasional muscle spasm (primarily confined to the shoulder and finger regions) or barely-noticeable twitch (exclusively confined to the facial features). John tries to imagine what’s going on inside his head and can’t; he only has the vaguest sense of what a mind palace even is, or how it works, but given Sherlock’s frankly ridiculous deduction abilities, his must be crammed full of just about everything under the sun. Reorganizing it will take ages.

Maybe John should take a nap.

He dismisses the idea as stupid for two reasons: One, he’s uncomfortable but also sort of afraid to move; two, it’s possible (not probable) that whatever benefit Sherlock is getting from his presence will be lessened or negated if he’s unconscious. Everything he knows about soulmates, from his med school studies to his practical experience, tells him that that’s utter crap, but he’d rather not take the risk. Nothing about Sherlock seems to follow any other rules, and who knows whether this is an exception or not.

“Chemical defect,” Sherlock blurts out, making John flinch.

“Sorry?”

“Sentiment,” Sherlock says sourly, blinking his eyes open. “A chemical defect found on the losing side.”

John watches him a few moments longer, but Sherlock doesn’t seem to be looking back; bracing his arm on his knee, John drops his chin into his palm and considers the statement. Certainly sentiment can get in the way of pure logical—deductive—reasoning, but to call it a chemical defect seems like overkill.

“What makes you say that?” he asks, and Sherlock hums.

“The reason for my error in determining the killer’s motive,” he says to the ceiling. “I moved through the deductions too fast, creating false bridges using some of the facts but not bothering to take them all into consideration because the solution fit what was there, it was because I wanted to _impress_ you.”

John doesn’t try to stop the affectionate little smirk quirking his lips. “Impress me?”

“Not on _purpose._ ”

“Just a biological response, huh? But hang on,” John interrupts himself, “is that what you’ve been thinking about all this time, just why you were wrong? What about your mind palace renovations?”

Sherlock does look at him then, scooting back to sit up properly and leaning against the arm of the sofa. “Of course not,” he says petulantly. “Call it a first test of the new system.”

“You’re _finished?_ ”

“How long has it been?”

John looks down at his watch. “About six hours.” Oh. “So have you made any progress on the case, then?”

“Not as such,” Sherlock admits evasively. John looks at him evenly and he sniffs. “A single anomalous case versus an entirely new method of information retrieval, it was hardly my top priority.”

“I just would’ve thought you’d be going out of your way to defy your brother’s direct orders.”

They exchange little grins, but Sherlock sobers almost immediately. “Restructuring my mind palace took a considerable amount of energy; the case was a distraction and I made efforts to…not think about it. Hopefully the lost time won’t prove too disastrous as things progress.”

“Maybe Mycroft will think you’ve listened to him and left the case.”

“The very notion is the height of profanity.”

John smiles again; it feels snobbish, but he’s about to take another jab at Mycroft when Sherlock jerks forward and clutches the edge of the seat cushions.

“Of _course!_ ”

So this is something that happens on the regular, then, Sherlock bursting out a triumphant exclamation without any context. A little charming, kind of annoying, but at least he seems willing to explain himself when asked (so far). John levels him with a skeptical look he hopes conveys both his curiosity and his reproach, and Sherlock stands to pace the floor.

“The target is _Mycroft!_ ” John is about to pipe up that he came to the same conclusion, but to be fair, he wasn’t certain of his fairly anecdotal reasoning, and he doubts Sherlock would even hear him through the blaze of his own epiphany. “That’s why the killer was so keen to attach Lestrade to Dixon’s case,” Sherlock goes on, “that’s why Mycroft changed his mind, Mycroft never changes his mind about anything if he can help it, that’s why he wants me to stop working on it, that’s why he bothered to come here to tell me in person— _oh!_ ” He whirls toward John, who sits up straighter at the attention. “Not only does Mycroft know who the killer is, _he’s afraid of them!_ At the very least he’s had dealings with them in the past, they’re much more threatening than this sort usually is but he’s never done anything about it because he thought they had an _understanding._ ”

“God,” John can’t resist cutting in this time. “That’s— He’s put the entire nation at risk, letting this lunatic run free.”

“But _he didn’t think so,_ ” Sherlock insists. “Somehow he thought the killer would abide by the rules of whatever arrangement they had between them, likely greater latitude than those people are usually privy to in exchange for keeping his targets in the unmatched lower classes, or some variation thereof.”

John nods, but a small thought creeps back into his mind and his jaw muscles tense. “Sherlock,” he asks slowly, and Sherlock actually stops pacing to look at him head on. “Are you sure he isn’t after _you?_ ”

The idea hadn’t crossed his mind before, if Sherlock’s owlish blinking and dropped hands are any indication, but then Sherlock shuts his eyes tightly and ruffles his hands through his hair ( _reset_ ). “There’s no reason to come after me,” he says, locking his gaze with John’s and his tone conveying some effort toward reassurance. “I hadn’t found you when he started this business so there was no reason to go out of his way with all this soulmate specificity, he probably didn’t consider me a threat or even much of a factor in his plans. But the best way to target Mycroft short of Mycroft himself is Lestrade; if he was disposed of, it would make sense to threaten me, but if I died as well, or if Mycroft thought I had, nothing would stop him from doing everything in his power to have this person killed. I suspect they know that, and since Lestrade is safe, I’ve nothing to worry about.”

John doesn’t exactly feel appeased, but it’s better than nothing.

“And they don’t even know about you, so there’s no need to be worried about that.”

Hadn’t even gone there, but thanks.

“Now what?” John asks. “The killer is after Mycroft, right, who refuses to arrest him. What’s going to happen next?”

Sherlock falls into his grey leather chair and slides down until he’s nearly fallen out of it. “Lestrade probably isn’t aware of any of this,” he muses. “He’ll be furious when he finds out.”

“So of course you’re going to tell him.”

“I think he deserves to know, don’t you?”

John grimaces, shifting to the left. “Maybe,” he acknowledges, “but what if it puts Mycroft in any more danger than he already is? Or it puts Lestrade in danger, if the killer decides he knows too much, if killing him becomes a calculated risk.”

“Sentiment,” Sherlock mutters darkly, and John resists starting an argument; Sherlock is always stubborn, or so it seems, but he’s becoming unreasonably so, probably due at least in part to lack of sleep.

There may be something to be done about that. “Sherlock,” John says, leaning forward, “do me a favor.” Sherlock makes a curious noise and John takes it as a promising sign to move forward. “Just, before you tell Lestrade anything, would you get some sleep?”

“Sleep is _boring,_ John!” Sherlock snaps, and John raises his eyebrows. Definitely unreasonable.

“Look, no matter how superhuman you think you are, you’ve been awake for over 48 hours, haven’t you, and your brain can be as finely tuned as you like but it’s going to start shutting down without your permission if you don’t give it a rest. You ever heard of microsleeps?”

“Of course I have,” Sherlock grumbles, “I’m not an idiot.”

Standing, John lays his hand on his hip. “I didn’t think you were, but I do think you had a few while you were—‘restructuring’ your mind palace, so, that’s a hint. And put it this way: However well-prepared you feel now to infuriate your brother-in-law at your brother’s expense, you’ll be ten times better after a bit of a break.”

Sherlock eyes him suspiciously, but there’s very little defiance there, so John braces himself for the inevitable conditions.

“Are you going to sleep as well?”

Not bad. John looks at his watch; it’s only about 19:00, but it’s been a hell of a day. “Think I’ll have a bit to eat first,” he says contemplatively, “then might as well turn in early, yeah.” He considers asking Sherlock to join him for dinner and decides not to push his luck; if he’s not hungry enough to seek food of his own volition, three days won’t kill him.

“Where?” Sherlock pushes.

“Uh,” John fumbles, “didn’t I see a menu for a Chinese takeaway place in the kitchen, I’ll just order in.”

“Where are you going to _sleep?_ ”

“In…my bed?”

“Not in mine?”

Ah.

John fidgets in place a little, moving his hand off his hip and sticking it in his pocket. “I hadn’t planned on it,” he says. Sherlock nods, looking like he’s about to say something else before he thinks better of it.

With an emotionless sort of finality, he vanishes down the hall to his bedroom and closes the door behind him. John fidgets another minute, then goes into the kitchen.

Doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a great night.

\---

John lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling, knowing ( _knowing_ ) that if he falls asleep, his dreams will be terrifying.

He furrows his brow and tosses his head to the side; if he tilts it at the right angle, the face of his watch catches the right balance of reflection and shadow to make out the time (23:55). He ought to get a proper bedside clock.

Sherlock probably has a bedside clock in his room.

How does this sort of thing usually work?

John thinks back to his last relationship—his only relationship, really, and what was her name? Annette? Jeanette, that’s it, Jeanette something or other, barely off the ground before she called it quits. Three dates and a blood test, that’s all it took; they hadn’t even moved in together, never mind sleeping in the same room. Or bed.

Do couples who aren’t in university, as he and Jeanette had been, even bother with dating before getting their blood tested? And if they do, how many dates before sex? How many dates before cohabitation? He and Sherlock are doing this all wrong, definitely. Probably. Maybe. Is there a rulebook? Does the DOH have a pamphlet?

For goodness’ sake, John. Take a breath.

There is no standard dating formula, he knows that well enough; smitten couples stumble into his office for blood tests after knowing each other merely hours (or, on one memorable occasion, fifty-seven minutes), hesitant-but-hopeful couples come together after dating for months, desperate loners come just to get their data into the system, dying for a match, anything at all. Sometimes they get lucky and sometimes they don’t, but duration or progression of relationship actually has nothing to do with it.

Does Sherlock have any expectations? Doesn’t seem like it; he didn’t actually ask John to join him, just whether he intended to, and when he finally put it out there, that they were soulmates, like it or not, he had seemed much more concerned with whether John would survive it than how he would handle the transition himself. Has he had relationships in the past? Bad experiences? Is his blood even in the national registry? Unlikely; John was required to enroll when he enlisted, and then again when he was hired in a government facility (“Better safe than sorry!”), but as far as he knows, he’s never been flagged for a match.

0:51.

Fuck, how did that happen?

You’re being quite the hypocrite, John Watson.

John takes a deep, even breath and thinks about the fact that the reprimanding voice in his head sounds a lot like Sherlock’s.

Four more breaths and he’s nearly out. Drifting, drifting, gently…

_Hurled violently backwards,_ his back aches (curled around his rifle), his neck is bent at an unnatural angle (trying to see three places at once), his feet sting (sand rubbing the raw skin), but no time for that, not now, not when we’ve tripped a secret wire, accidentally called in the cavalry, just another Tuesday isn’t it lads, hey now

_No._

This is not normal, this is not normal, this is not normal, this is

_Say it enough times and it starts to sound like the truth, don’t you think?_

Shots fired— John flings himself into the brush, holding his gun like a fragile lover, feels bullets whizz past his face ruffle his hair _bang bang_ down they go but

_Come on men Hey cover me There there go Go GO!_

Everyone shouts at once and no one hears anything except the man beside him and the bullets the bullets the deathly volley _bang bang_ down we go and

_Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck_

A hideous cry, a guttural scream pulls John awake, his throat raw and his wrist sore from where it banged into the wall (probably a few times). He doesn’t remember the dream—was it? Must’ve been. Nightmare, most likely. That old refrain.

For a minute, John hates himself.

Maybe it would help if he went downstairs. Soulmates and all that. Sherlock did offer, sort of.

John blinks rapidly, his eyes burning and wet.

3:47.

A few hours ago, it might have worked.

So that’s that. Alright then.

Deep breaths.

\---

“You didn’t sleep well.”

John shakes his head roughly, as if trying to give himself a jolt, and blinks at Sherlock across the kitchen table. It’s not as though the deduction was a difficult one, he should think; his eyes are a little red, the bags under them a little darker than usual. He noticed it all in the bathroom mirror as he brushed his teeth, but it seemed so unimportant. Sherlock looks as alert as ever, which is the main thing.

“N—no,” John agrees, stopping just short of excusing himself with a dismissive “nightmares.” Sherlock must know about them; the violin the other night couldn’t have been an accident, that would be ridiculous, but it doesn’t feel like the sort of thing he should admit to out loud. “How about you, you look pretty rested.”

Sherlock arches his eyebrow in an expression John easily interprets as “Then why bother asking?” Fair enough. He sips his tea and Sherlock stares at the screen of his laptop.

“Figured out what you’re going to do about Lestrade?”

“Let Mycroft deal with him,” Sherlock says, so bitterly that John snorts into his drink. “If Lestrade continues as the lead on the Dixon case, which he will, and follows the connection between it and the other alleged suicides, which he will, he’s not a total idiot, then he will, eventually, arrive at the same conclusion we have, that someone is masterminding these killings to some as-yet-unexplained end.”

(“We have,” as if it had been a collaboration.) “But you said it’s to get to Mycroft,” John points out, “isn’t that the explanation?”

“Yes but Lestrade won’t reach that point on his own.” Sherlock closes his computer firmly and raises his clasped hands in front of his face, apparently his default “thinking” posture. “His focus becomes quite narrowed when he gets on a really good case, very tenacious, and he likes this one very much, so he’ll be working late nights.” (“Sounds familiar,” John almost says but doesn’t.) “In any event I’m quite sure it won’t take him long to remember Hopkins taking O’Connor from him and the connection forged by the names in the note will prompt him to look into the murder books, where he’ll realize that Hopkins should have been assigned to Dixon and see Mycroft’s fingerprints all over it.”

John nods, then stops and looks away as he gathers his thoughts. “But, Mycroft didn’t have anything to do with Lestrade being assigned there; didn’t you say that was the killer’s doing? The blackmail and all that?”

“Of course Mycroft didn’t have anything to do with it,” Sherlock waves him off, “but the important thing is that Lestrade will _think_ he did. He won’t leap to subterfuge or corruption in his own department,” (“ _sentiment,_ ” John hears, even though Sherlock doesn’t say it) “but he’ll realize something’s wrong and he’ll link it to Mycroft asking that I be assigned to and then removed from the investigation—Mycroft doesn’t usually interfere, Lestrade comes to me on his own, and he’ll ask him about it, and Mycroft will need to either lie or tell him the truth.”

Isn’t that convenient. “And what if he lies?” John asks.

“Lestrade will know,” Sherlock says confidently. “They don’t lie to each other, the two of them; Mycroft thinks he knows everything worth knowing so he never bothers to ask, and Lestrade knows that Mycroft can’t talk about most of his work so _he_ never asks, but if the need arises, they’re so out of practice that it’ll be obvious at once.” He smirks, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. “If he tries, Lestrade will come immediately to me, and I’m quite sure that’s the last thing Mycroft wants.”

“So you’re set either way,” John concludes with a grin.

Sherlock winks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A microsleep is an unconscious state lasting from a fraction of a second to about 30 seconds which can occur as a result of sleep deprivation or during an extremely monotonous task. People experiencing them are generally unaware of them when and after they occur.


	9. a world of changed plans

One week. One week of alternating quietude, seemingly arbitrary questions, and impatient outbursts, obsessive Googling of god-knows-what, intent staring into microscopes (usually at slide samples but not every time), sweeping out of the flat for hours on end and returning with items Sherlock casually neglects to identify, and even some sleeping and one proper dinner. (Life sure is interesting.) That’s how long it takes for Lestrade to get to the point Sherlock did in mere hours. John assumes that to be what happened, at least; no one actually lays it out as such, but that’s when Mycroft pays them another visit.

As opposed to the superiority and spite Mycroft exuded on his last home invasion, this time he’s irrepressibly enraged, yanking the door open and leaving his hand clutched around the knob as he fixes Sherlock with a twisted glare more suited to a Disney villain than an actual human person. Sherlock, on the other hand, is as smug as can be, lounging in his grey leather chair with a book John’s never heard of called _Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner_. John can’t tell if he’s reading it or merely using it as a prop.

“Brother mine,” Sherlock says exuberantly, his eyes fixed on the pages in front of him. Mycroft slams the door shut in response.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done,” Mycroft hisses, his shoulders held back and the tautened muscles making his chest tremble. Sherlock looks up guilelessly and John would laugh if he wasn’t a little concerned they’ve actually caused a serious problem by…something. Not sharing Sherlock’s deductions with Lestrade, maybe.

“Opened the pathways of communication?” Sherlock tries nonchalantly. Mycroft clenches his teeth with a click audible even to John, who’s seated at the table all the way across the room.

“This matter was _contained,_ Sherlock,” Mycroft growls, punctuating his words by thumping his umbrella against the floor. “Gregory should not be _involved._ ”

“That part’s not exactly his fault,” John points out, beginning to feel out what’s going on. “The whole soulmate business, Lestrade was going to get drawn into this sometime or another, wasn’t he.”

Mycroft closes his eyes and breathes in loudly through his nose, the hand that isn’t holding his umbrella clenching into a white-knuckled fist. “John,” he says thinly, once he’s recovered himself the smallest amount, “this doesn’t _concern_ you. Don’t speak of matters you _can_ not understand.”

John looks nervously to Sherlock, but he seems completely controlled this time around. In turn, Mycroft doesn’t seem put off by his brother’s reaction, or non-reaction, except to notice it—John spots the twitch at the corner of his eye when he does—and file it away somewhere. (They really are so similar.)

“You know he’s right,” Sherlock says. “Come to think of it, I’m not even sure why you didn’t tell Lestrade before now; he was obviously going to figure it out sooner or later.”

“Unless he thought they’d have the whole thing sorted out before Lestrade made much progress on the Dixon case,” John theorizes. Sherlock nods with a considerate hum.

“Of course, of course.”

“ _Sherlock._ ”

“What do you need _me_ for?” Sherlock demands, abruptly ending their playful mockery. “You know who this lunatic is, you know he’s after— _you,_ you know he’s fixated on soulmates for some ungodly reason; Lestrade was going to need to be told eventually!”

“If you know who he is,” John ventures, “and how much of a threat—I’m guessing if you tried to capture him, he’d just pull one over on the prison system the same as he did with NSY, but why don’t you have him executed? You could, couldn’t you?”

Gritting his teeth again, Mycroft walks stiffly to the sofa but doesn’t sit, preferring instead to lean on his umbrella, even though it forces him to stand with a noticeable lilt. When he finally speaks, he refuses to look at either of them, fixating on a Union Jack pillow tucked against the leather cushions.

“Ignoring the moral and ethical implications of putting a man to death without even a proper trial,” he says as Sherlock scoffs, “the situation is not nearly so simple as you may believe it to _be._ We do not know the current standings of his various…engagements, what pieces he has on the board at the moment, what safeguards over what information, over whose lives or deaths. We cannot afford to remove him from play until we understand his status, until we can act without setting in motion any number of potentially disastrous consequences. Until we can be sure he doesn’t have some, even more malicious vengeance waiting in the event of his downfall.”

“Better the evil you know,” John summarizes, and after a begrudging sigh, Mycroft deigns to nod.

“To put it plainly.”

John frowns thoughtfully. “Hang—hang on, I think I’m missing something; Lestrade knows about this killer now, right, but…it’s not like that makes him any more dangerous, does it? Not like he’s suddenly got the all clear to start sending Lestrade death threats in the post or poisoning his coffee, so what’s changed, exactly?”

“Ooh, can I tell him?”

“ _Sherlock._ ”

Sherlock smirks in response and returns to his book, but Mycroft continues to glare at him; maybe he finds it centering, he certainly does it enough. John rests his elbows on the table in front of him and waits, not feeling like he particularly owes anybody anything.

After a tense pause, Mycroft’s heavy sigh sounds unnaturally loud, partly because it’s coming from him (of all people) and partly because the rest of the room is so deathly quiet. John perks up a bit, not that anyone notices.

“Gregory’s and my relationship functions best when we keep our professional lives as…isolate as possible,” Mycroft explains to the Union Jack cushion. “I am aware that he is perfectly capable of defending himself, but also that the nature of his work is, or can be quite dangerous, and would prefer to avoid situations which might cause me to…overreact.” Was that an admission of a protective streak? A softer side? John decides to hold onto that for later and hides his grin as Mycroft continues:

“He in turn knows full well that my work depends on secrecy in all matters, and respects that without objection.” Taking another breath, considerably quieter, he finishes haltingly: “Additionally, too much—extracurricular interference on either of our parts risks exposing the true nature of our relationship, which is…unacceptable.”

John nods carelessly as he tries to sort through the most basic parts of the situation to figure out whatever it is Mycroft doesn’t want to tell them outright. The killer is dangerous, the killer is after Mycroft, the best way to get to Mycroft is through Lestrade, Mycroft doesn’t want Lestrade to know the killer from his Dixon case is the same as the one who’s after Mycroft’s head because they keep their work lives separate from their romantic life (apparently to keep from panicking that the other is going to be killed at any given point and be tempted to intervene), Lestrade isn’t stupid so he figured it out more or less on his own, and now Mycroft is furious at Sherlock.

Naturally.

What exactly has John gotten into by involving himself with this family?

No, no, never mind that right now. Assume Mycroft’s reaction is, what’s it called, projection? Displacement. He’s actually mad at Lestrade, not Sherlock. But that doesn’t make any sense; Lestrade was just doing his job, and pretty well, apparently, which Mycroft ought to be proud of, or at least pleased by. So Mycroft is lashing out at his brother because he’s mad at...himself? Yeah, alright, that’s possible.

What must _that_ childhood have been like.

Anyway.

“So now that Lestrade knows all this stuff you were trying to keep secret from him,” John says, finally drawing Mycroft’s eye, “how’s he taking it?”

Sherlock snorts a mocking laugh and Mycroft frowns some more.

“He is…displeased.”

John’s nodding again when it hits him.

Oh, _god…_

Turning in his chair to face Mycroft more directly, he folds his hands together and sets his shoulders. “Are you telling me,” he says as gravely as he can manage, “that you came all the way over here, in one of your government-issue armored black cars, in the middle of the day, to rip into your brother, because you and your husband are having a lover’s quarrel?”

Sherlock smothers his laughter in the back of his hand and John quirks a grin at Mycroft, who sighs through his teeth.

“Gregory cannot be permitted to continue his investigation.”

So “Yes,” then. Great. That’s great. Magnanimously, John chooses to let the matter rest for now. “Couldn’t you get him pulled?”

“No, he’d see through that immediately,” Sherlock puts in. Mycroft tips his head.

“Admittedly so.”

John looks between the two as they appear to engage in some sort of nonverbal sparring match. Why _is_ Mycroft here? It can’t just be to vent about his fight with Lestrade. Sherlock obviously knows his brother’s intentions (he’s Sherlock, after all), so why hasn’t he said anything to speed the whole process along? He’s drawing it out on purpose, but what could be worth wasting all of their time just to squeeze in some extra gloating?

Oh, John. Are you really so blind?

“You want to hire your brother,” he deadpans. Sherlock looks impressed for a second before he smirks at Mycroft, who, unsurprisingly, glowers at John.

“I don’t need to hire an intermediary between myself and _my husband,_ ” Mycroft says coolly.

“I wouldn’t think so,” John agrees, “but you do want this case to be finished up as quickly as possible, and obviously Lestrade isn’t going to work _with_ you right now, and, you seem to have dug yourself in too deep to fix it yourself. Which, I’m assuming, would be your usual preference?”

“Naturally,” Sherlock assures him. John grins; this is actually kind of fun. He can see why Sherlock shows off so brazenly whenever he gets the chance. (Not that he would sanction the practice. Of course.)

“So I’m guessing then that you aren’t here with the usual nationalism-and-knighthood routine, are you. _You_ need Sherlock to catch the killer.”

“It seems the most practical solution.”

Sherlock makes an indecisive humming noise, tipping his head from side to side. “I suppose from _some_ perspectives…”

From his stiffened posture and pinched expression, Mycroft actually appears prepared to argue Sherlock down, which means that Sherlock is seriously considering not taking his brother’s case. John leans forward and tries to catch Sherlock’s eye; it’s surprisingly easy, almost as though he was waiting for it.

Sherlock grins teasingly and John retorts by pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows, a careful mix of berating and prompting; he knows it works when Sherlock rolls his eyes and looks down. Mycroft smiles smugly at Sherlock and then a bit more kindly at John, but it’s still sort of creepy. (God, they _are_ children.)

“Your country thanks you, gentlemen,” he says, back on his high horse, and John resists mimicking Sherlock’s petulant pout as Mycroft leaves them. The door closes with the sort of gentle firmness which seems to be a required skill for figures of authority worldwide, and John scowls, to Sherlock’s evident delight.

“The country doesn’t know the half of it,” John mutters, standing and taking a few restless steps. When he looks to Sherlock, however, he’s already slipped into his “deduction” mode, fingers tented in front of his expressionless face.

“Sher…Sherlock?”

Nothing, no surprises there. Shifting his weight, John considers heading out for lunch, or maybe to the store; they’re already running low on milk, somehow, though he knows he bought some just the other day.

He’s barely taken three steps toward the door when Sherlock’s flat voice stops him.

“John.”

“Yeah,” he replies reflexively; Sherlock’s eyes are still closed.

“Don’t leave.”

“Sorry?”

Sherlock doesn’t repeat himself.

Well. Okay then.

John goes to the kitchen for some toast.

\---

It takes a little while, but John figures out more or less how far he can go in any given direction before Sherlock stops him. The kitchen is fine—Sherlock can see him there, or he could if he’d open his eyes—but the hallway is dangerous, possibly something to do with the fact that that’s where Sherlock’s bedroom is, and John has to declare his intentions to just go to the toilet and be right back before he can leave without a fuss. Any motion too close to the front door is another red flag, so upstairs is out of the question, much less actually outside.

The game of learning the boundaries, even with all the testing and confirmation re-testing, is only enough to occupy him for about half an hour; it’s not particularly difficult, and though John thinks he understands Sherlock’s refusal to let him leave, it still chafes in a few ways (one of them being the reminder of regimentation of life in the army, and subsequently being in command in the field, and subsequently the nightmares, and subsequently the PTSD [name your monsters, sir], and let’s avoid that, if you would, if at all possible). Sure, they’re soulmates, and sure, this is all new, and sure, the whole “honed abilities” thing takes awhile to adjust to and lock down, and even sure, this case is important on both a national and personal level for Sherlock (and thereby for John, now), but it’s not like Sherlock is his _commander._

He’s not. Is he? No. Is that a thing with soulmates? The dichotomy exists as a subject in social science, of course, the dominant/submissive, the authority/acquiescent, but it’s not a _rule,_ is it?

No. No, it’s not, he would’ve known. No, right? (Right?)

When it comes to it, how is their match going to help _him_ in the workplace? He can’t very well ask Sherlock to tag along to the office every day; they’d never get any cases and Sherlock would be bored out of his skull. And even if they did manage to magically attract clients, Sherlock would run off right away and leave John to…not have his soulmate around to heighten his abilities. Is that why so many soulmates are in similar fields, for convenience? They’re together most of the time anyway, the Universe figures, let’s just make it official.

Come on now, that’s just stupid. Of course not, plenty of soulmate pairs work in different arenas of the same profession, or different fields altogether; it’s the fact of being matched that leads to the proficiency spike, the bond forged in time spent together and intimate knowledge of the other. Physical proximity in fact has little or, depending on who’s discussing their research into that mysterious but most necessary field of soulmate matching, possibly even nothing to do with it.

Still.

It’s all quite a bit different to know the information from a textbook than to believe it in practice.

Sherlock, who claims to know anything worth knowing about everything, must surely be aware of all that, so why does he insist on keeping John in such close proximity? Is it because they’re still new to this, and he’s worried they aren’t close enough yet for the benefits of having a soulmate to be in effect when they’re out of one another’s sight? Even so, that might account for his stopping John leaving the flat, but he should at least be allowed to his _room._ It’s not _far;_ Sherlock could call for him and he’d hear, or John could stamp on the floor in an emergency.

Maybe he’s just trying to control the situation. The case has a lot of moving parts and delicate features, that’s become clear, and the more he can keep tightly reined in, the easier the rest of it will be, probably. It removes a lot (or all) of John’s autonomy, which is unacceptable, or will be if it happens too often, but for now, maybe, just this once, it might be okay.

No, actually, John will never survive under those conditions; he needs to know that he’ll be heard, to know that his opinion will matter, or at least be considered before Sherlock throws it away. Hopefully that’s not it, then.

Is Sherlock worried? Is that all it is? Is he just nervous about all this? When they met, he wasn’t seeking and may have expected to never find his soulmate, and he didn’t even want to bring it up when he’d deduced their match, but now that it’s out in the open, is he afraid John will…flee? Refuse him? But John said he wouldn’t, or as good as did. Sherlock thought he’d be disappointed but he _wasn’t,_ he’d made that clear. Sherlock needed to reorganize his mind palace and John had stayed with him, sat there for _hours_ because Sherlock had asked him to.

God, maybe he _is_ John’s commander.

_Nope._

“Damn,” Sherlock mutters, catching John’s ear in an instant. When no further explanation is forthcoming (though Sherlock has opened his eyes at last), John elects to sit in his red armchair and wait.

And…wait.

(Has Sherlock stopped blinking somehow?)

Still waiting.

(The left window could use a wash.)

 _Still_ waiting…

“That’s all there is to it.”

John shakes his head abruptly (zoned out a bit there) and looks at Sherlock. “That’s…what to what?”

Sherlock raises his head, meeting John’s eyes querulously. “Our next move in this case.”

“And that is…”

Sherlock doesn’t respond immediately, setting his lips into a thin line that could mean a few things but reads clearly to John as “You’re not going to like this (and neither do I).”

“We have to draw him out.”

It stuns John into silence not because the idea is particularly impudent but because it sounds so…so _illogical._ No one is able to touch this madman, or at least that’s the impression John’s gotten, and he’s unwilling to bare himself in any way to people he isn’t already controlling (and even then, probably not much), and Sherlock wants _him_ to come to _them?_ He might not even know who they are!

Well, no, he probably knows who Sherlock is, at least, if he’s planning to kill Mycroft; he’s careful to cover his bases, he must’ve done his research and his target’s brother would surely have come up, and Sherlock seems to be under the impression that the killer knows that he’s Mycroft’s weakness after Lestrade. That’s the thing, though, isn’t it, Sherlock is Mycroft’s weakness _after_ Lestrade; Mycroft would never let them throw Lestrade directly into the line of fire, but if Sherlock is planning to use himself as bait, how would he carry it out? It’ll never work, and John finds that even if Sherlock were able to come up with a way, he’s none too thrilled with the idea.

Tipping slightly to the side, more a rotation of his shoulders than anything, John ends leaning on his left arm with his lips parted and his brow furrowed deeply.

“ _How?_ ”

Biting off a scoff, Sherlock drops his folded hands between his knees and looks away.

“I don’t know.”

Brilliant.

At least they’re on the same page.


	10. a world in which there are no memories

Sunday, Sherlock doesn’t talk much, and spends the day in his grey leather chair with his hands folded together in front of his face. John goes to the store and buys peas and dried pasta, and stops for lunch at a pub on the way home.

Monday, John goes to the clinic. Sherlock doesn’t put up a fuss.

It’s a bit difficult to concentrate, but that doesn’t matter. The work is dull and unimportant and John’s conduct is perfect.

Nice paperwork, you replaceable cog.

In between clients, because Mondays always have a few of those moments, John wonders if he should ask Sherlock to get his blood tested, make them official in the eyes of the law. Fit them into the machine.

What a disgusting thought.

As he disinterestedly questions a man named Vincent Spaulding, filling out the corresponding paperwork by muscle memory without looking at the page, he wonders what would happen if he were to quit his job. Wherever his funds come from, Sherlock obviously doesn’t actually need a flatshare, and John’s salary is a pittance anyway; Sarah’s already been replaced, though he doesn’t know the new doctor’s name (doesn’t intend to learn it), and there’s no reason to believe he couldn’t be substituted for just as easily.

Oh, there would be so many questions, and he has so few answers.

His last scheduled patient clears out at 16:13, but he’ll be penalized for clocking out before 17:00. “We don’t want to discourage drop-ins!” He spins in his chair as slowly as he can manage and thinks about Sherlock, which is only natural, probably.

Typically, after finding one’s soulmate, it’s impossible to discuss anything else; everyone comments on the change in affect (emboldened), the unearthly glow (metaphorical), the excitement for life (narrow), the hatred of separation (paranoid). “He’s perfect, I’m so lucky”; “She’s wonderful, I’ve been blessed”; “They’re amazing, everything is amazing.” John wonders if there’s something wrong with him that no one’s asked. That he hasn’t even thought to bring it up.

He and Sherlock are just different, maybe.

Well, who doesn’t say that. “We’re special.”

Oh, yeah? Well _we’re_ trying to catch a serial killer, beat that.

John chuckles to himself, still turning slowly. It’s nothing to laugh about, of course.

He looks at the clock above the door. 16:22.

_Buzz._

His mobile vibrates, skittering at a slight angle across the desk, and he grins as he picks it up.

Wait, no.

_I prefer to text._

So then—

“John.”

“Mycroft?”

_Shit…_

There’s a small pause wherein John sees Mycroft’s permissive little smile in his mind’s eye. _Yes, it’s me._

“How is he doing?”

How is he _doing?_ Are they supposed to have some psychic link he never learned about, some intuitive connection? It’s never been in any of his textbooks, no one mentioned it in any of his classes at med school, it’s not in any of the DOH literature…is it? No. Is it?

“Uh—alright? I think, but, dunno, I’m at work right now.”

“No.”

Excuse me?

“Er, yeah, I am.”

“No, John, you are on your way home.”

16:25. He’ll catch hell for leaving so early, especially after barging out practically mid-client meeting last week. Not to mention…

“And…why?”

Mycroft sighs, quiet but obviously frustrated, and John rests his elbows on his desk as he cradles his phone to his ear.

“You…care for my brother, correct?”

John takes a moment, not because he disagrees so much as to collect his thoughts. The conversation suddenly feels very much like navigating a minefield; there are a few right paths and about six dozen wrong ones, and good luck figuring out which is which before you get to the end.

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“As I said, Doctor Watson, you’re on your way home. Aren’t you?”

Doctor?

“Is Sherlock in trouble?” He sounds a touch panicky, but Mycroft will take that as a good sign, won’t he? Sincerity of response or something?

“A car is waiting out front.”

“Mycroft—”

He’s already rung off, of course. John moves the mobile from his ear and looks at the screen, which offers no new information; he sighs, his lips pinched in a narrow line, and stands.

John Watson, this is your life.

\---

“Sherlock?”

He calls out before even setting foot on the stairs, vaguely noticing Mrs. Hudson standing in the doorway just beyond with a concerned expression on her face. Just what goes on in this house when he’s not around? What does everybody know that he doesn’t?

“Sherlock,” he calls again as he opens the door, instinctively looking toward the sofa. Sherlock isn’t there but in the grey leather chair (fine), his eyes closed, his fingers clenched tight around the armrests, and his right leg twitching (odd).

John walks slowly closer, a certain heaviness in the air making him cautious (nervous). Sherlock’s left leg begins twitching to match his right, and his grip on the chair makes an unpleasant scratching noise when his nails skate across the leather.

Oh god.

John stops well short of Sherlock’s chair, looking uncertainly to his own red one and electing to remain standing. It’s been so long since he dealt with this sort of situation; how does it go again?

Quickly, that’s how. Get to it, Doctor, no time to waste. He takes a breath. Speak clearly and evenly. Don’t raise your voice.

“Sherlock.”

Patience.

Give it a minute, maybe.

No, not that long.

“ _Sherlock._ ”

“HE’S _TEASING ME!_ ”

Oh god.

John takes another breath, tries to quell both his fear and his burgeoning fury.

“Sherlock, look at me.”

He does, wild and bloodshot (as expected). John frowns and Sherlock bares his teeth.

“ _He is teasing me and I cannot find him,_ ” he seethes.

“Sherlock, you’ve been looking for him all of two days.”

“What are _you_ doing _here?_ ”

(Don’t try to reason with an addict while he’s high. Stupid. Rookie mistake, John, you’re better than that.)

“I got off work early.”

“That’s _NOT allowed._ ”

“Yeah. Your brother helped.”

Sherlock makes a funny growling noise that ends on a furious shout, pounding one of his fists against the chair and scratching the other against the fabric again so loudly that John fears he may have torn it.

“ _Everything_ is working _against me!_ ”

Splitting. His speech is a little drawling, though; he’s coming down. That was quick (wasn’t it?). Oh, John, you should’ve been here; this case is wearing on everyone, why did you think it was a good idea to go to work?

He crosses his arms over his chest. Not fair. He didn’t know about this; he should’ve, but he didn’t. Sherlock should’ve told him. Or Mycroft, apparently. Or Lestrade, maybe. (How long has this been going on?)

“Everything is _useless!_ ”

Sherlock’s grip is still white-knuckled but his posture has gone slack, his legs necessarily stopped bouncing because of it. Looking to the floor, John sniffs sharply; when he picks his head up, the syringe on the coffee table seems to sparkle obnoxiously and it’s a wonder he didn’t see it at once. Sherlock’s sleeves are rolled up to his elbows and now that he’s paying attention, the bruising is clear, the injection point still dark in the crook of his left elbow. Right in front of your face, John, it’s so obvious.

Not so much because he needs to as because it’s easier this way, Sherlock slides to the floor and crumples, falling forward and sideways at the same time, ending up a tangled mess of arcs and lines. John kneels beside his head and reaches out, stopping just short—why, though?—and then threading his fingers through the sweaty black mop of his hair. Sherlock presses his face into the carpet and trembles.

“Oh Sherlock.”

What have you done? (What have I done?)

 _It’s not my fault_ (isn’t it though).

(Tell me you're not miserable.)

\---

Sherlock presses his palms into the floor and pushes himself up, or tries to; he makes it a few inches but it’s too difficult to stay there, so he falls and tries again, this time leaning on his forearm, crawling up to brace himself and laying most of his weight on his hip. Just out of reach, John leans against the footrest of his red armchair, his laptop open in his lap and his mobile on the floor at his side. He looks up at the motion and puts the computer aside.

“Sherlock.”

“You weren’t supposed to come home,” Sherlock says blearily, pressing the heel of his free hand to his eye.

_False start._

“I wasn’t— Sherlock.” John maneuvers himself onto his knees, landing at Sherlock’s side. “Sherlock, what were you doing? What _is_ all of this, where did this stuff _come_ from?”

He doesn’t know what to expect, doesn’t know what he wants to hear; is there a right answer? Anything that might give relief? Might make this all okay, all just another quirky feature of his madcap soulmate?

Is there? Is there, please?

Ha.

There isn’t, John knows. Even as he asked the question, he knew, and now, as Sherlock leans against his grey leather chair with his shoulders hunched and his face turned away, he knows again, knows it still.

“Sherlock,” he says more coldly than he intends (but the alternative would be a ghastly roar), “when we first met, you told me I should know the worst things about you. You told me you play the violin when you’re thinking and sometimes don’t talk for days on end.”

Sherlock doesn’t look at John, but his gaze falls, and that’s something.

“Mycroft called me,” John says. “Mycroft called me and he called me ‘Doctor Watson,’ and he told me to come home early.” Sherlock scowls, his lip curling, and John clenches his left hand into a fist. “Sherlock, _what,_ is going on?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Unclenching his fist and tightening it up again, John coughs a humorless laugh and shakes his head.

“This isn’t coming out of nowhere,” he says with more confidence than perhaps he ought. “You kept saying I wasn’t supposed to see it; you knew how much you could afford to take to have it wear off by the time I got home, and it must’ve been pretty tight, since Mycroft only asked me to leave half an hour ahead of schedule. You have experience, and Mycroft knew to warn me; this isn’t just a one-time thing, is it. And I’m not an idiot, Sherlock, I know you’re thinking about the case, the killer who’s after your brother, but why you thought you needed to get _high_ to do it, that’s…”

As he fumbles to finish the sentiment, John finds that the words aren’t just eluding him, they really aren’t there. The hurt he feels, the personal insult is stunningly deep, enormously meaningful; this man is his _soulmate,_ and he was _suffering—_ he is _still_ suffering, and rather than turn to John for help, he resorted to some atrocious old habit, tried to carry it out under cloak and dagger, to hide not only the weakness but also the cure (such as it were).

What should he have expected, though? What had he any _right_ to expect? “Soulmate magic” is just a catchphrase, a flippant remark, a sarcastic tease; everyone’s life has its troubles, he knows that well enough, and finding one another doesn’t mean that any of them will just go away, much less all of them. The shadows here are dark, John, good luck finding your way through.

“So go, then.”

“What?”

His legs pulled up in front of his chest and his hands on his knees, partially obscuring his face, Sherlock looks challengingly at John and shrugs.

“You shouldn’t feel any obligation to stay with me.”

“Sherlock, you’re my _soulmate._ ”

“So you keep reminding us both.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Sherlock’s glare turns absolutely murderous, as if threatening John; “Choosing to stay is the unwise thing,” that’s what it says. “Being with me is a fool’s errand. Are you a fool, John Watson?”

Well, are you?

“Don’t patronize me, John,” Sherlock spits. “You’re here because we’re soulmates and you’ve stayed as long as you have because this case is an endless source of engagement, new _mysteries,_ because I can’t _solve_ it, I am _failing,_ and you, you need to wait for its conclusion. You need resolution, a perfectly human trait, and then you will leave because you can name me on your medical forms and finally rise out of the muck and mire of that hideous office you’ve been trapped in ever since your return from the _war!_ ”

_No._

“Sherlock.” He opens his mouth and John raises his hand sharply. “You’re wrong.” (Way to start off on the right foot. He should’ve planned this better, but there’s no stopping now.) “I don’t know what kind of…what kind of shit you’ve been fed in the past, I don’t know who, warped you this way, who made you think that soulmates are the only thing worth sticking around for, the only reason anyone would ever put up with anyone, would put up with _you,_ but didn’t I tell you? I don’t care about that. I—I mean,” ( _oops_ ) “obviously I _care_ about it, I care about _you,_ but that’s not _why._ Or at least, that’s not the only reason.”

Sherlock’s acidic rage has tempered to a sour scowl, so John figures he must’ve said something right. (Which part?)

“I admit that I don’t really know what I’m doing,” John carries on; it’s easier now that’s he’s started, although he’s still not sure where he’s going. “I think you might not either, and that’s…that’s fine. We’ll figure it out together.” He fumbles as ingrained generic platitudes leap to mind; this has to be real, it has to be true, it has to have meaning. Actual meaning. “Look, fate or biology or random acts of nature or whatever you want to call it made us a pair, and we found each other without even trying. I’m not saying it’s destiny,” he interrupts himself when he sees the disdain in Sherlock’s eyes before he looks away again, “but we’ve ended up here now, by chance or by accident or by design, I don’t know, but what I do know is that I _like_ you. I liked you before I knew we were soulmates and I liked you after and I still like you now, even though you’re being…” ( _Boxed yourself in, bail out, bail out!_ ) “I, I feel better when I’m _around_ you, and I know part of that is probably—definitely the fact that we’re soulmates, I know it is, but I think I’d want to be there even if we weren’t.”

“Well—”

“I would,” John cuts him off sternly. “I would.”

(Would you really?)

“I’m not asking you to love me,” he says as sincerely as he can manage, rocking up and slightly closer. “I’m not asking you to pretend to be anything you’re not. I just want you to know that you aren’t alone anymore. If you ever were.” (My my, that was quite presumptuous.) “I…don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not angry with you for not solving the case by now, I know you’re brilliant and I can see that you’re working, you’re working so hard, and it’s killing you, and this maniac clearly knows what he’s doing and he probably knows something about you, you said. It’s a hard thing to go up against an enemy you don’t understand who…understands you.”

Sherlock sniffs indignantly and John isn’t sure if it’s disbelief or just an act, but it feels like some kind of progress, maybe. Hopefully. He’s doing his best, that has to count for something. (Not much.)

“Anyway I would never be angry with you for not solving a case, no matter what the circumstances,” John backtracks, hearing a bit of bluster in his voice and trying to get it under control. “I— _am_ angry with you for using…whatever this is,”

“Cocaine.”

“god, Sherlock, _cocaine,_ but I can’t say I understand it, understand what got you to here, what made you think you… _needed_ it, and, I’d like to. I’d like to try. Because I want to help you. I do.”

Fidgeting (coming down still), Sherlock scoffs and looks the other way, not quite at John yet (although their gazes meet in the middle for an instant). “Hero complex,” he mutters indignantly, and John sits back and sighs.

“ _You_ complex, apparently.”

Just for half a second, the corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches up in a smile.

That'll do for now.

Take it and be grateful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Splitting” refers to a defense mechanism by which a situation, group, or individual is perceived as either all good or all bad with no middle ground or grey area. It is commonly a trademark of borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and depressive disorder; here it’s used as an indicator of paranoia and irrational thinking, psychological traits which may be present during a cocaine high.


	11. a world in which there are only images

They don’t speak about it.

John wants to, very badly, but he’s not surprised. He thinks about calling Mycroft, but they’re not quite there yet, and about calling Lestrade, but that feels like the worst kind of imposition. In any case, that would be going around behind Sherlock’s back, which is a terrible idea for any number of reasons.

On Tuesday, he decides not to go to the clinic. He should probably call…somebody, but it’s not like he’s ever called in sick before (he’s only had the job a few months), and no one in the office is really a “supervisor,” as such. They’ll probably assume the worst, which is fine. Or they won’t notice, which is also fine.

At noon exactly, Sherlock’s mobile goes off, and he ignores it until it stops. Three seconds pass between the end of the tone and the beginning of another call—more or less the time it takes to hit “redial,” probably—so John glances at the display and answers for him.

“Lestrade,” he says conversationally. Sherlock whips his head around, finding John at once, and furrows his brow as though he’s surprised to see him there.

There’s a pause before Lestrade’s baffled response. “John?” he asks, and in the background John hears a soft shuffle as his footsteps stutter and stall. “This is Sherlock’s number, yeah? He alright?”

“Fine,” John answers, looking at the sofa where Sherlock is watching him curiously. “D’you need something? Is, is anything wrong?”

“No,” Lestrade says, the background noise ebbing and flowing as though he’s started walking again. “Well, yes, actually, but—look, can I talk to him? Why’re you answering his phone?”

Mycroft hasn’t told him. Isn’t that interesting.

John narrows his eyes and smiles a little at Sherlock, who miraculously seems to understand as he smirks in response and reaches out for the phone.

“What is it?” Sherlock says by way of greeting, and John chuckles to himself. A moment later, Sherlock sits up, his fallen expression sobering John completely as he reflexively steps closer.

“Bring the files,” Sherlock snaps. “Yes obviously right now, what did you think I meant? Of course it’s incomplete, it’ll be incomplete when you’ve _finished_ with it but I need to see them _now!_ ”

He rings off, most likely in the middle of Lestrade’s next sentence, and John edges even closer but doesn’t sit. Sherlock presses his hands together and touches his index fingers to his lips, squinting angrily at the empty space in front of him.

It doesn’t feel like the right time to speak, exactly, but the tension in John’s chest is going to start showing on his face soon enough and he can’t think of any other way to (maybe) resolve it. Taking a quick breath to break the silence, he scuffs his heel against the floor.

Cut to the chase.

“What file?”

Sherlock raises his gaze without moving his head, giving his expression an aggressive veneer that John tries to ignore. The situation is a tense one, obviously, whatever is going on, and Sherlock is angry about something. He’s got every right to be aggressive. Heated. Frightened. (Frightened?)

“Daniel Clark.”

John thinks back over the officers from the Dixon crime scene—Donovan, Lestrade…that was it, actually, plus someone named Anderson who Sherlock wasn’t too keen on, and Hopkins, the DI assigned to most of the suicide-that’s-actually-murder cases. Who else? No one, right? Molly Hooper at the morgue, and then…no one. No, the name is definitely unfamiliar.

“Another victim?” he guesses tentatively. Sherlock scowls.

Another victim.

John shuffles his feet, and goes to sit in his armchair. Sherlock remains immobile and furious.

The windows are open and the street outside bustles with midday traffic; it’s drizzling, has been since sometime last night, and the sill is damp. A couple argues heatedly, their voices tapering off as they storm away, and a girl on the phone yells to be heard over squealing cars and a bad connection.

Later, minutes or hours, a siren wails and the shades light up blue and red. John checks his watch; 12:31. Huh. That was fast. Mrs. Hudson ushers Lestrade upstairs without a fuss, and he opens the door without knocking.

“Dunno what you think you’re gonna find,” he says, dropping a fairly thin folder on the coffee table in front of Sherlock. “That’s all we’ve got so far, a few preliminary sketches and a general write-up on the body. I’ll try to answer any questions, but Sherlock, this has only been an open case for…” he checks his watch, “going on three hours now, there’s not much to tell.”

“You knew enough to call me,” Sherlock retorts, already poring over the file. “What gave it away?”

“The calling card,” Lestrade deadpans. John looks up at him abruptly; the killer doesn’t have a calling card, does he? That was one of the problems of all the cases prior, unlinked in any discernable way. “The note on the floor,” Lestrade goes on, “or, on the victim’s head, placed there postmortem, evidently, a list of all the previous victims’ names. This one wasn’t on there, though, couple of the boys thought that was odd.”

“Frivolous,” Sherlock says suspiciously, tossing aside the page he was reading; John has the sense he hasn’t heard a word Lestrade has said.

“How was he killed?” John asks. Lestrade turns quickly, obviously surprised; that’s flattering, really it is. John offers a cheeky grin.

“John. Er, hi.” Lestrade glances back at Sherlock, who doesn’t notice, and then moves away from the table. “He was…shot at close range through the back of the head. Victim appears to have had his hands raised at the time.” John nods once; Lestrade looks pointedly between them, and John ignores it.

There’s a loud smacking noise as Sherlock throws the file to the floor.

“He’s _teasing_ me!”

John tenses immediately and Lestrade looks down at him with some concern. (Get ahold of yourself, Watson!)

“He’s trying to kill your brother,” Lestrade tries after a beat, “and you think he’s teasing _you?_ ”

Sherlock blurts out a frustrated shout.

“Yes, obviously! Why can’t anyone just use their _brains,_ must I do _everything_ for you?”

John stands, moving slowly toward Sherlock without entirely meaning to. “Why was Daniel Clark’s name left off the list?” he asks slowly. Sherlock looks up at him as though John is the most brilliant thing he’s ever seen and rises to his feet, standing carelessly on the discarded file.

“Yes! Exactly!”

Lestrade leans over to put himself in Sherlock’s eyeline, his own eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted into a perplexed sneer.

“What?”

Shouldn’t have said that, John knows (without knowing how, but that doesn’t matter). Sherlock is on the hunt now, tracking down a lead they can’t see and it isn’t his concern to show, but it’ll be right, it’ll be right. Everything will be fine now, Sherlock has his feet back under him, the ground has stopped shaking, the world balanced on its axis, and everything will be fine. It doesn’t occur to John that to put such tremendous faith in one man, one man he hasn’t known long, one man he doesn’t know much about, is a foolish thing, an ill-advised pursuit, because that isn’t the important part; it’s true, and that’s all that matters in the end. ( _But how do you know?_ ) He knows it the way he knows that this is up and that is down, and here’s left and right and forward and back and all the rest. He knows because it’s _Sherlock._

(You believe him because he’s your soulmate, John, don’t be stupid. Keep your wits about you, man, these are untested waters.)

For whatever reason, Sherlock puts his hands on John’s shoulders for a moment (it’s nice) and removes them soon after (it was a bit weird). “I need to speak to Mycroft,” he says fiercely, and John must have misunderstood.

“You, are going to Mycroft, on your own,” he says, just in case he didn’t. Sherlock wrinkles his nose, making his lips pucker dramatically, and John almost laughs. Not the time.

“I need the book on the Walker case,” he says as his features smooth out, “and trying to access it through… _traditional_ means would surely raise alerts I would prefer to leave at rest.”

“He won’t just ask Lestrade for it?”

“It was Hopkins’ case, he wouldn’t have unfettered access.”

“Oi,” Lestrade cuts in, waving his hand in a sarcastic sort of way. Right. Still here.

Sherlock looks at him inquisitively. “But Mycroft would get you the files immediately if you asked,” he comments. “He’s quite desperate for your forgiveness.”

Lestrade rolls his eyes and turns away a half step or so.

“You know he is.”

“Sherlock,” he snaps as he turns back, “I’m not gonna use Mycroft’s…sense of guilt to help you play out some narcissistic slap fight with this lunatic.”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable course.”

John frowns at him. “Sherlock.”

“Oh _fine._ ”

As Sherlock bounds over to his chair to retrieve his mobile, John sits on the sofa and puts his chin in his hand with a wry little smile. Without his particularly noticing, life has been transformed into a surrealist mockumentary. You thought you knew what was going on around you? Ha! The laws of so-called nature to which you conformed are put in place by man and you need only be willing in order to subvert them. Now, are you ready, you sad old ex-military man? You and your soulmate are going to douse yourselves in blood and track down a serial killer.

Funny how things work out.

\---

Whatever’s going on at the site of the Clark murder, either Lestrade or his team seem to think it isn’t worth his time to come back; of course, Mycroft doesn’t bring the Walker book over himself, so he and Lestrade don’t have to worry about sorting out their dirty laundry in public (ish), but Lestrade asks to stay and give the thing a look and Sherlock doesn’t bother to object. Presently, a pretty young woman arrives at their flat—also shown upstairs without any notice from Mrs. Hudson, so, familiar—and gives Lestrade the side eye as she hands Sherlock an extremely well-sealed package.

“Thank you,” John comments when it seems no one else is going to. The woman nods in his general direction, her attention already refocused on the BlackBerry in her hand. She’s practically out the door when Lestrade steps toward her.

“Anthea.”

Managing to keep her obvious ire down to a small sigh, she looks at him pointedly. To his credit, all of Lestrade’s discomfort seems to be from whatever’s going on in his own mind rather than her efforts to cow him.

“I was just doing my job.”

She nods without sympathy, and then she’s gone. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Sherlock went to the mantle and retrieved his multi tool knife, most of the letters it had pinned falling to the floor as he stabs through the layers of packing tape sealing the shipping envelope in his other hand; John makes his way closer and Lestrade is marooned in the middle of the floor.

“Sunday.”

Lestrade looks up and John tilts his head at the files, reading the topmost page upside down.

“What’s that?” Lestrade asks, evidently trying to perk up somewhat.

“Traditionally follows after Saturday, Lestrade, do keep up.”

Lestrade sighs and massages his forehead. “Sherlock…”

(John smirks at the exchange but wisely keeps his giggles to himself.)

Rustling the file and gesturing unhelpfully at the page he’s been reading, Sherlock chooses to look at John, oddly enough, as he explains: “Susanna Walker was found at the Rugeley Post Office in Staffordshire on a Monday, meaning she had been deposited there on a Sunday, when the building was closed. How the hell NSY was drawn into this case without attracting the attention of a higher level of authority is an indictment of the entire English police system, but I suppose that’s to be expected when a vicious blackmailer is on the loose.”

Lestrade grumbles his reluctant agreement with Sherlock’s sarcasm. “She might’ve been dropped there Saturday after close,” he suggests, but Sherlock shakes his head.

“No, forensics was quite conclusive on the matter.”

It’s obvious where this is going. The corner of John’s mouth quirks in the subtlest of smiles. “What gave it away, then?”

Sherlock smiles back and John is pleased. “Leaving the original list—without the new name—when he must know it was taken from the previous crime scene, he’s frustrated he hasn’t been caught out yet. Wants acknowledgment for his work.”

“He’d just escape again,” Lestrade says darkly, the perfect counterbalance to Sherlock’s brightened mood.

“He doesn’t want to be _captured,_ ” Sherlock clarifies, “he wants to be _identified._ He knows Mycroft will never allow his imprisonment but he’s sick and tired of perpetrating all this artistry without receiving credit, he won’t just drop in for the final kill without getting some recognition.”

Accustomed to Sherlock’s ways, presumably, Lestrade doesn’t comment on the “artistry” designation, and John has already learned to read between the lines. Sherlock’s respect for the craft is not the same as his admiration for the perpetrator.

“Mycroft could just tell you who he is,” Lestrade points out.

“He wouldn’t, though,” John reminds him. “He hasn’t yet, what’s to make him give it up now? Whatever their arrangement is, part of it must mean keeping that detail to himself.”

“So you’re going to go to the post office in Rugeley on Sunday and, what, wait for someone to show?”

Oh.

Well…

Oh.

The information isn’t new, John understood Sherlock’s intentions as if they were his own, but to hear the words out loud, in plain sentences…

Sherlock, meanwhile, has steel in his eyes and in his voice when he answers, “Yes,” and there isn’t a very good argument to mount against it.

_I have a bad feeling._

Yes, obviously. Get it together, Watson, ready to ship out.

Are all your affairs in order?

\---

John goes to the clinic Wednesday morning and decides not to go back to his office after lunch.

Sherlock smiles warmly when John comes home and doesn’t comment on anything. Thursday and Friday, John doesn’t bother to go in at all. Friday afternoon they play Cluedo, which is quite a lot of fun and will never, ever happen again. (“It's not actually possible for the victim to have done it, Sherlock.”

( _Speaking of suicide…_ )

Saturday, there’s a head in the refrigerator, and John is mainly frustrated and only a little curious as he throws away the tomatoes on the shelf below.

Sherlock makes tea.

\---

Lestrade arrives at 7:30 Sunday morning and it seems rude to keep him waiting _too_ long, so at 10:33, they pack into his car—a nice silver 2010 BMW—with Sherlock claiming the passenger seat and asserting his frustration at not being the driver as John shuffles into the back.

“Alright there, John?” Lestrade asks, though there’s nothing going to be done about it either way. John says he’s fine and they all sit in silence.

Is Sherlock thinking about the case? It seems rude to interrupt. No, not rude, but pointless. Maybe counterproductive.

Two and a half hours, this trip, and that’s if the traffic is decent.

Yeah.

After awhile, they pass a service area across the road from a golf club, and Lestrade clears his throat.

“So how’re you two getting on?” he asks in a breezy attempt at casual conversation. “This whole flatshare situation working out alright?”

It’s difficult to tell who the question is aimed at, and John waits uncomfortably for Sherlock to answer. They haven’t had a proper conversation about telling people; Lestrade is family, which surely means something, although whether that’s that Sherlock is more or less inclined to tell him he’s met his soulmate, John isn’t sure.

Unhelpfully (unsurprisingly), Sherlock doesn’t say anything, so John offers a little tone to fill the gap.

“Working out fine for me,” he says neutrally. “Sherlock?”

“Come _on,_ Geoff,” Sherlock snaps, “don’t waste our time pretending to be so obtuse.”

Geoff?

Lestrade drums his palms on the steering wheel and doesn’t respond, so John clears his throat and leans forward.

“Sorry, what?”

Sherlock waves his hand carelessly in Lestrade’s direction. “He wants to know if we’re soulmates.”

It seems to be a mark of how long he’s known Sherlock that Lestrade doesn’t bother to deny it, though most would at least make an effort.

“It’s Greg, by the way,” he says instead, the tilt of his neck signifying that he’s clarifying for John’s benefit rather than correcting Sherlock. “Nice to meet you.”

“And…you,” John echoes. “We, uh.”

Generously, Lestrade—Greg, not Gregory—chuckles and leans back against the headrest. “Can’t say I got to be a Detective Inspector for nothing.”

John offers an awkward laugh and flexes his fingers against the seat cushions.

“Who’s Anthea?” he asks after a beat, part interest and part distraction. Sherlock snorts and Greg unexpectedly sniggers as well.

“Mycroft’s PA,” Greg answers. “I don’t know her real name and actually, I’m not sure Mycroft does either.”

“He claims to,” Sherlock says.

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he.”

“Indeed.”

John puts his arm over the back of the seat and looks out the window.

The ride is agonizingly dull, chilly and grey and endless. There are fields…and more fields…and then some different fields.

It’s great.

Ages later, they pass by about four massive houses and a sign directing them to the left if they want to stop off in Birmingham. John doesn’t.

“Sherlock,” he says. Sherlock grunts his acknowledgement. “Sherlock, what exactly are you expecting to find when we get there?”

It’s a question he should’ve asked before they left, and he’s not sure why he didn’t, but he thinks Sherlock must’ve been expecting it, should have an answer ready. Greg looks at Sherlock for a second, curious about the answer, but then, he didn’t ask, either.

Sherlock sighs through his teeth.

“He’ll have left the door open, taking the opportunity to show off that he can get in and out as he likes.”

The car hits a pothole that hurts the inside of John’s skull, and Sherlock doesn’t make any more predictions. Greg grunts awkwardly, though whether he was surprised by the content of Sherlock’s words or the fact of them at all is impossible to know for sure.

John raises his eyebrows and puts his face forward goadingly, though Sherlock can’t see him. “Do you think he’ll tell you anything? Do you think he’ll say anything about your brother?”

Sherlock sniffs and puts his elbow on the armrest, and John gives him about ten seconds of silence.

“Is he going to try to _kill_ you?”

“ _I don’t know!_ ”

The vitriol in Sherlock’s voice startles John back to silence, although what he’d really like, he thinks, is to fix whatever’s wrong. (What _is_ wrong?) Is it that his brother’s safety might be at stake right in front of his eyes? Is it that, despite Sherlock’s intentions to (somehow) tempt this madman out of hiding, what’s happening now is exactly the inverse of that? Is it that he’s under pressure now that they’re so close, only a little while longer before they reach Rugeley?

Is it that he doesn’t know?

That’s really it, isn’t it, that’s all there is to it. Sherlock hates not knowing. Not for the first time, John is equal parts dying to and terrified of asking Sherlock about his past; it’s a conversation they’ll get around to eventually, probably, but even if “now” is the appropriate time in terms of their relationship (is it?), it’s definitely _not_ appropriate in terms of place-and-time-of-what-we’re-doing-just-at-this-moment.

Plus, Greg is here. Not that he doesn’t know, maybe, but…no. It’s personal, it’s intimate. It should be had quietly, privately, somewhere with room to move and to move at the right pace.

_No one speak._

No one does.

Fields and trees and endless, endless grey skies.

Greg drives through about five roundabouts before the GPS directs them to turn left and then drive straight for zero-point-four miles. John looks out the window to the right; the post office, as it turns out, is on the left.

A big, garish, yellow smiley face has been spray-painted on the door. A young boy stands in front of it, seemingly transfixed, but he runs off as soon as Greg stops the car.

Sherlock is out on the pavement before the engine dies, and John takes his place beside him.

“Stay close to me,” Sherlock says softly. John frowns, his eyes shifting to Greg behind them.

“I’m not a child, Sherlock,” he says carefully. _Just because I have bad dreams sometimes doesn’t mean (pause) anything._

Sherlock thins his lips and keeps his eyes on the door.

“Please.”

John sighs, then straightens his posture, his chest rising a little with the overcompensating arch of his spine.

The door is open, as predicted.

Once more unto the breach, Captain.

Sherlock leads the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Serial killer William Palmer lived in Rugeley, “300 or 400 yards from [the post-office].” (Gilbert, James, ed. _The Trial of William Palmer for the Alleged Rugeley Poisonings._ London: Taylor and Greening, 1856. Print.)


	12. a world of shifting past

The lights are off, and the damp haze outside blotting the already sparse sunlight doesn’t help; even though the front wall is mostly windows, everything is heavily shadowed and eerily daunting. (It’s just a post office, for goodness’ sake.) Sherlock walks to the counter across the floor, stopping at a door on the back wall and turning to survey the service area: stacks of manila envelopes and corrugated cardboard boxes, packing tape, spools of twine and plastic strapping. (It’s a _post office._ ) On the counter surface is an open binder of novelty postage stamps that may be intended to be whimsical and charming but instead seems frivolous and weird.

“Alright?” John says lowly, scanning the shelves and keeping his hand on the wall. Sherlock clicks his tongue and frowns.

“Lookout,” he says sharply. John flinches, but the order is a crossed wire; Sherlock is looking at Greg, who glares back evenly.

“What, my police presence would get in the way of your…lunatic fringe standoff?”

Sherlock arches his brow skeptically.

“Do me a favor, Detective Inspector, and estimate the size of that storage area John and I are about to enter.”

( _Is that what we’re doing?_ )

Greg opens his mouth to reply (he’s dying to, it’s so obvious), but there’s not much to say to that; John has the impression that he never _really_ expected to be invited along in the first place, which seems a touch unfair considering how easily Sherlock stormed the crime scene when their roles were reversed and Greg was in charge, but…there you go.

Heaving a frustrated sigh, Greg scans the room one more time.

“I’ll be here,” he says, looking out the window. Sherlock doesn’t acknowledge the supportive gesture, but it doesn’t seem to matter; they both understand. Greg steps outside and shoos off the young boy who’s crept back to sneak another look at the graffiti.

Sherlock straightens his coat and sniffs.

“No point in delaying any further,” he says. True enough.

He and John lock their gazes and John takes a breath, putting his hand on the knob. This is stupid, really; what exactly is he afraid of? Seen it all before, Captain, there’s nothing new under the sun.

Still…

No. It’s fine.

Sherlock nods and he opens the door.

It’s even more difficult to see inside, and John wants rather badly to take Sherlock’s hand in his, even for just a moment; he doesn’t, doesn’t even reach, but the urge is there, noticeably, and quashed, necessarily. Decorum and all that. They both enter the storage room, leaving the door open for all the good it does. It’s larger than they might have expected from the size of the main room, although it may just seem that way because there’s so much less clutter and machinery. Sturdy but old metal shelving lines the walls, catching the light on some unhelpful edges, just enough to discern—yes, there it is. A silhouette, a shadowed figure. Suitably dramatic.

“Took you long enough.”

Irish, that’s the most obvious thing. A little reedy, more than a little sarcastic.

The ground feels uneven.

“My apologies,” Sherlock says thinly. He’s stopped moving entirely, and John shifts his weight without much altering his posture. The man claps his hands once, louder than necessary, and the sound echoes.

“You’re here now, though,” he concedes. “I suppose I ought to be grateful, wouldn’t you say?” Raising his hand, he gives a cheeky wave. “Jim Moriarty. Hi.”

Sherlock is distinctly unamused. “What do you want?”

_Only fools rush in._

But this is dangerous. Stop it all as soon as possible, this guy’s crazy and powerful in ways they don’t even sort of understand. (He wants a game, don’t rush him.) (No no no, get this over with! Get out of there, get out of there now!) (Take your time, man, don’t lose your head. Don’t be stupid.)

_Don’t be stupid._

“Ohh,” Moriarty croons patronizingly. “Oh, Sherlock. If you can’t even guess that much, are you trying to tell me I’ve just been wasting all this time?”

_What?_

“I don’t guess,” Sherlock says. There’s no tremor in his voice, but it sounds tense, sounds like it’s strung along a wire in the ceiling. Sounds weird. It makes John nervous, more than the madman across the room has so far.

“One of my favorite things about you,” Moriarty assures him, taking slow steps forward. He’s not small, taller than John, but shorter than Sherlock, compact with slick black hair and wrapped in a nice black suit. “Needed a little help with this one, though,” he goes on. “Couldn’t quite make it on your own.” Sighing, he shakes his head. “I’m disappointed, Sherlock, I really am.”

“Susanna Walker,” Sherlock says impatiently. “Obvious.”

“No no no,” Moriarty shakes his head in time with each word, “not Susanna Walker. That was just a bit of _fun,_ just to get things started on the right foot. Let me guess: You thought you were being clever? Cleverer than me?”

A little glimmer as Sherlock narrows his eyes for a second—there it is, there, the realization, the epiphany, the flash of understanding—is it too late? God, please don’t let it be too late, not after all this, not after everything that’s happened, everything this bastard has put them through, has put Sherlock through, has put them through.

“Yeah,” Moriarty murmurs. “You get it now, don’t you? It’s a shame,” he continues loudly, pacing away from Sherlock with his hands behind his back, “it really is. I wanted our first real meeting to be somewhere a bit, _sexier,_ you know? But you just wouldn’t do without that extra push. It’s _such_ a shame.”

Sherlock’s and John’s gazes meet for an instant— _why now why not_ —and Sherlock takes a brazen step forward.

“What’s changed?” he asks. “Taking over the British government not enough of a challenge anymore?”

“Oh,” Moriarty says casually, spinning on his heel, “there’ll be time enough for that.”

There’s a Beretta pointed at Sherlock’s face (John recognizes it instantly, not exactly sure how). It’s a showy chrome thing with a black plastic handle inlay, and Moriarty doesn’t look threatening so much as amused, his eyes crinkling at the corners but his smile shallow. John is immediately a soldier unexpectedly pinned between armed combat and diplomatic negotiation, paralyzed with indecision as his brain races at a thousand miles per hour on a shaking line between the two, every single thought slipping his grasp.

“Like it?” Moriarty asks, flicking the safety off. “I bet you didn’t bring one; big brother said no, didn’t he.” John hopes his alarm doesn’t show ( _Sherlock_ has a _gun?_ ), but Sherlock only refocuses his eyes from the barrel of the gun to Moriarty’s face; that seems to please him, if his spreading grin is any indication.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” Sherlock replies, and Moriarty shows his teeth.

“Awfully confident for a man with a loaded pistol pointed between his eyes.”

“I’m not wrong.”

_Do you know that?_

John scowls at Moriarty to keep his face from betraying anything dangerous; of course, it’s pointless, Moriarty is totally focused on Sherlock. (Only slightly insulting.) Cocking his head, Moriarty puts his hands up, raising the gun into the air.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right. I don’t like to get my hands dirty.” John pivots slightly, placing himself at Sherlock’s shoulder and taking some comfort at their closeness as Moriarty lowers his hands again, flicking the safety back on as he tosses the quarters of his suit jacket aside to holster the pistol. “But the flirting’s over, Sherlock,” he taunts. “I’ve shown you what I can do and you’ve kept up just, _just_ enough to keep me interested.” He chuckles, putting his hands in his pockets. “Do you know, I didn’t even kill the last two? Didn’t have to. It’s so funny what people will do for their soulmates.”

He hasn’t fed them an especially lucid or continuous narrative so far, but the abrupt tangent is so surprising that John can’t even try to sort it out (at least not right now). Sherlock, thank god, is keeping his wits about him, or at least appearing to.

“O’Connor and Arden weren’t soulmates,” Sherlock challenges, his eyes narrowed again, skipping straight over Dixon (the giveaway) and Clark (the extra hint).

“Of course not,” Moriarty scoffs, “and anyway neither of them would ever have had the, shall we say network connections to find me. No no _no,_ Sherlock, come on! You’re so close!”

John’s going to destroy him.

Sherlock leans forward, just slightly, and Moriarty bites his lip.

“They killed each other.”

Eagerly, Moriarty tilts his body toward them. “I knew I was right about you.” His face falls when Sherlock’s expression doesn’t change, and then he rolls his eyes. “Oh and now I bet you want to know _why_ they killed each other, don’t you? I’ll tell you, it wasn’t hard; I told Patrick that Mr. Arden was holding his soulmate hostage, and then I told him where the knife was and locked the door.”

For a minute, they all stand there staring at one another, waiting to see who’ll jump first. Logic dictates the guy with the gun gets to decide, but Moriarty seems to have forgotten he even has it; instead he walks toward Sherlock again, his shoulders rounded forward.

“Do you know what’ll happen if you don’t speed up, Sherlock?” he asks gently. “To you.”

“You’ll kill me?” Sherlock guesses wryly.

“Don’t be obvious.”

“Right, here’s a thought,” John cuts in before he can stop himself, “how about you just tell us?”

Sherlock closes his eyes as if he’s in pain, but Moriarty looks absolutely delighted, and John fervently regrets ever opening his mouth.

“Oh he’s sweet,” Moriarty says, keeping his eye on John as Sherlock breathes out through his teeth, “I can see why you’d like having him around. But then people do get so sentimental about their _pets._ ”

It’s not _like_ that. (Is it?) (No.) (But—) ( _No._ )

“You should cherish these moments, Sherlock.” Moriarty brushes some lint, probably imaginary, off his shoulder and straightens his cuffs. “Really you should. Of course you won’t be able to for very long.” Chuckling to himself, he offers a sarcastic little wave. “Ciao, Sherlock Holmes.”

There’s a soft rattling sound as Moriarty reaches back to open a door behind him (a back door, of course there is) and Sherlock tilts his head, his gaze scrutinizing.

“Catch you…later.”

“No you won’t!”

The door slams shut and Sherlock scowls, John feels incredibly relieved without entirely understanding what the danger was, and they both retreat to the front room where the light is worse than when they left it. Greg stands outside the front door with his thumbs in his jeans pockets and his knees locked, looking purposefully toward the road.

Sherlock puts his hands behind his head and grips his hair, baring his teeth at nothing as he begins pacing the floor. It’s tremendously disconcerting.

What’s wrong, my dear?

John’s lips part and he doesn’t speak. It can’t be just that Sherlock doesn’t know, it can’t; Moriarty didn’t really seem to tell them much of anything, but Sherlock was obviously affected by what he did say, so something in it must’ve been awfully revealing. Does Sherlock know now how Mycroft is going to be attacked? Is there a plan in motion that he can’t stop? John looks at the floor and thinks back; the only thing Moriarty said about Mycroft was that he wouldn’t allow Sherlock to bring a gun to their meeting, more likely meaning that he wouldn’t allow Sherlock to kill Moriarty (old information), but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some veiled hint in the words that only Sherlock would understand. Something in that whole O’Connor-Arden double murder thing, maybe? Was Moriarty saying that he’s going to get Sherlock and Mycroft to kill each other?

No, they would never. No matter what. It would be stupid to put energy into trying to force them. So then who’s in danger?

Be reasonable, man.

John looks down. It was just a passing remark, a little throwaway, but Moriarty had said something, said it with such delight and amusement…

_“It’s so funny what people will do for their soulmates.”_

Is Moriarty going after Mycroft by targeting _Greg?_ But then why go to all the trouble of drawing Sherlock out to the post office? That would only make sense if his victim was John ( _don’t panic_ ), but these murders started long before John and Sherlock had ever met, so then…

Sherlock shouts angrily and storms to the door, John hot on his heels. Greg steps out of the way just in time to avoid being hit.

Really, the solution has been staring them in the face for awhile. It’s amazing the power that fervent denial can have to demolish a person’s reasoning capabilities.

They should be ashamed.

Also, John’s going to destroy him.

\---

A little more than an hour out of Rugeley, four construction zones in a row and the resulting congestion slow them down to about 40 miles per hour. A few cars speed by in the opposite direction, smears of color against the desaturated green and grey backdrop; John isn’t sure if the scenery is actually that melancholy or if his mind is playing tricks.

Sherlock sits with his elbow propped on the armrest and the bridge of his nose pinched between his left forefinger and thumb, and there’s a pain in John’s stomach that’s quite close to butterflies but much more sickly.

Greg spends about half the time watching the road and the other half glancing apprehensively at Sherlock (once or twice at John) until Sherlock’s had enough.

“ _What?_ ” he snarls, closing his eyes tightly as his hand trembles. Greg shakes his head slowly and keeps his eyes forward. There’s a pause as Sherlock grits his teeth.

“I’m _clean,_ ” he mutters. (John’s chest hurts.)

“Didn’t say you weren’t,” Greg says indifferently.

“You were thinking it.”

There’s not much to argue against.

The afternoon, overall, has been a terrible disappointment.

\---

Greg drops them off in front of 221B and nods solemnly at John when Sherlock shoves the door open and doesn’t wait for him to follow. John waves apathetically and catches the door before it shuts all the way, stepping inside in time to watch the dramatic swirl of Sherlock’s coat disappear from the landing.

“I take it things didn’t go terribly well,” Mrs. Hudson says knowingly, and John sags against the wall.

“That’s one way to put it.”

She sighs in a resigned sort of way, and John wonders briefly at the point of her before he shakes his head and follows Sherlock upstairs.

The door is open, but he’s nowhere in sight; in a moment of supreme weakness, or at least that’s how it feels, John troops down the hall to his bedroom and listens to the sounds of sheets being tossed about and possibly a large pillow hitting a window. Raising his hand to knock, he decides at the last moment to lay it on the frame instead, waiting; the bathroom door closes violently with a bit of reverb.

This isn’t the time for work. A good night’s rest, that’ll do right now.

John checks his watch. 17:12.

Yeah, that’s about right.

\---

The soldiers are smears of cedar and sage against the desaturated green and grey backdrop; John isn’t sure if the scenery is actually that melancholy or if his mind is playing tricks. Everything moves in slow motion, bodies scrambling through wet cotton from one shitty cover to another and trying to get shots off on the way, sand kicked up and making it hard to see (was that friendly fire what the fuck) but one thing’s for sure, people are dying, dying, dying.

There’s a dreariness in the air that speaks loudly in his ear: Whatever happens here, it says, it’s all inevitable.

_I don’t believe it._

John closes his eyes and tries to open them again and it takes forever, the boundlessness of eternity compressed into a single action until it’s over, done, and all there is now is blood and dirt and gunfire—his own gun is aimed precisely, he knows the track the bullet will take and it will be _perfect_ and it will be _proper_ and it will be _necessary_ and he is paralyzed, paralyzed with his finger on the trigger as he watches his target fire instead, and there goes Albert, and there goes Leer, and someone’s caught Miller right in the chest, he’s a goner (what kind of a doctor _are_ you).

In his mind’s eye, John throws his gun over his back, runs dives _crawls_ to the wounded, _I’ve got you, it’s okay,_ and he saves them, saves them, can’t save them all but he _tries,_ he makes a _difference,_ and they aren’t thankful now but they _will_ be and even if they aren’t that’s fine, everything’s fine, because he’s doing his best, he’s doing his part and we’re gonna make it back, lads, you hear me, we’re gonna make it.

For an instant, a revelatory instant, he sees through everyone else’s eyes instead of his own and he hasn’t moved an inch, his finger still on that trigger, the barrel of his gun aiming, continue aiming, pointed at nothing now because _they’re_ not paralyzed, _they’re_ not stuck, frozen, dead alive, and he wants nothing more than for time to be normal, _please,_ nothing but that, just let me go and then

_Hang on, Doc! We’re getting you out of here!_

Oh

Oh

No

_Please god let me live._

Consciousness comes all at once, dark and cold; sweat, that’s it, dried sweat under the heavy blankets, keeping him cool (no thank you). _Fuck._ It’s not true that your brain won’t let you die in your dreams, John knows that well enough, but this time… So close, so close, not close enough. And now this: darkness, disorienting, heavy and familiar.

Groping blindly, John grabs his watch from the bedside table and tilts it in front of his face. It’s quite pointless, being that his eyes are still closed; he’s not entirely sure he wants to check the time, but that’s the thing people do when they wake in the dark, the normal thing. How many more hours before this is mandatory? Should I even bother trying to go back to sleep?

He’s going to look eventually. Might as well get it over with.

3:47.

Fuck.

He drops the watch back on the table, thinks he hears it fall to the floor.

Okay, now what?

The dream (nightmare) is still in his head in scraps, disjointed pieces, lurching about in detached scenes. He’s sick to his stomach without knowing why; lie still, it’ll pass, it always does.

Nope, not this time—holding his breath, he heaves himself out of bed, stumble-walking to the bathroom and folding his arms over the sink (the floor is tile, hard on the knees), his throat already burning so the vomiting isn’t too bad, isn’t as bad as it could be. It’s mostly bile anyway, so. Take a drink, wash the taste out.

John turns on the faucet and sits on the floor.

_Fuck._

He listens hard, leaning toward the door (closed, reflex), hoping for a melody, hoping to hear something whatever composition improvisation recording _anything, please_ Sherlock, _please_ be awake, _please_ know that I need help, _please_ know that I’m asking for you.

Silence.

Deep breath.

John rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. After a minute or two, he gets up and turns off the water.

_What’s stopping you?_

Yeah.

The stairs are steeper than usual. He picks his way through the living room by memory, luck, and streetlight filtered through the curtains.

_Don’t second-guess, you already know this is a bad idea._

He turns the knob so slowly he doesn’t even hear the latch retract.

The lights are off.

_What were you expecting?_

Tick. Tick. Tick. Funny how silence makes a watch sound so loud, isn’t it. (No, not especially.)

Sherlock’s bed is much too large for one person. He’s curled on the left, facing the wall, the empty right side exactly the size for a sleeping companion.

John sits on the edge with his hands in his lap and his gaze on the floor and feels a little better.

It’s a mess, it’s all a mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moriarty uses a Beretta 92FS to shoot himself at the end of “The Reichenbach Fall.” Variations of the Beretta 92 are used by Italian and French military forces (re: Western Europe), but not British.


	13. a world without future

John wakes with a crick in his neck, a bruise on his shoulder, and his head the clearest it’s been in awhile.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he runs his tongue over his teeth—foul, stale—and assesses his position. What happened last night, he woke from a nightmare ( _again_ )…went to the bathroom, threw up, and snuck into Sherlock’s room, naturally.

Great, yeah, that’s exactly how that was supposed to happen.

Must’ve fallen asleep where he sat; at some point, he’d tipped over and collapsed against the headboard (bruise) and evidently spent the night slouched there (crick in the neck). Bracing himself for the fire under his skin, he gradually rights his posture; yep, there it is, aching muscles and that’s not a pinched nerve but it’s close enough.

Putting his arms out behind him, John falls back on his hands and rotates his shoulders, feeling more than hearing the gratifying little rumble of his joints stretching out. Giving them a minute to resettle, it occurs to him that under the rumpled sheets, the mattress feels awfully sturdy.

What must Sherlock have thought to wake and find John not three feet away. Had the situation been reversed, John might’ve snuck out early, too.

How long has he been asleep? How long ago did Sherlock leave? What _time_ is it?

John lurches forward, putting his face in his hands and sighing heavily. When it comes right down to it, who gives a fuck. Going to the clinic is absolutely out of the question, obviously, and Moriarty’s made his point, he’s said his piece and given them whatever clues he intended to; they’re not under the gun anymore (really, John?) and he’s going to take the day on without a schedule if he wants to, so there.

Where’s Sherlock, though, that’s a legitimate question.

_Bang—bang bang—bang._

John doesn’t reach for a gun that isn’t there and he doesn’t dive for cover, but he does wonder for a second if he’s dreaming (of course not, you idiot) and it fills him with a lingering sort of terror (everything is inside out). Sitting up as straight as possible and clenching his fists over his knees, he takes a deep breath in through his nose and holds it for as long as he can stand, maybe seven seconds (seven heartbeats), before opening his mouth to blow it out.

 _Yes,_ apparently Sherlock _does_ have a gun. It’s actually not too surprising; it should be, but it isn’t.

Still.

The living room, then.

Sure enough, he marches down the hall to find Sherlock draped over his chair, a pistol hanging from his right hand and his head lolling back to stare at nothing in particular. John stalks over and grabs the gun up, checking that the safety is on and ripping out the magazine before he drops it on the table.

“What the _hell_ are you doing?” he thunders, accidentally furious but wholly sincere. Sherlock scowls and gets out of his chair to inspect the new holes in the wall, picking at some of the dislodged paper.

“Passing the time,” he says indifferently. Finished with his examination, he collapses to the sofa, curled toward the wall with both arms tucked in front of his chest.

“Passing the _time?_ ” John grits, sitting heavily in—Sherlock’s chair (well, it’s the nearest one). “Where did you even _get_ that?”

Sherlock twists himself onto his back and rolls his eyes toward the ceiling. “Mycroft.”

Where else. Let’s keep it in the back of the storage shelf for emergencies, shall we?

“Anyway,” John says tersely when Sherlock doesn’t go on. “What’ve you figured out?”

“Only the obvious.”

So this is moving along at a breakneck pace. John makes a conscious effort to stop tensing his jaw and grinding his teeth before he speaks again.

“Moriarty thinks you two are soulmates.”

Tipping his head to the side, Sherlock looks at John with such astonishment that John actually recoils. That was either the absolute wrong or the absolute right thing to say, but it’s difficult to know for sure.

“John,” he breathes, “you are a marvel.”

That answers that. John smiles perplexedly, furrowing his brow and feeling a pleasant little flutter in his chest as Sherlock springs to his feet, walking aimlessly in jagged patterns with light steps.

“That is precisely the conclusion he expected, the conclusion he _planned_ for me to come to, the conclusion he hoped I had already stumbled upon on my own but he was disappointed in me John, don’t you see, that was the _test,_ to see whether I would fall for it because _he knows we’re not._ ”

John purses his lips and squints for a second. “But we are.”

“Not _us,_ ” Sherlock proclaims, “me and _him._ ”

Taken aback, John pauses to recollect; just yesterday he had been _so sure._ (Hadn’t they both?) But if not that, then…what?

“Hang on, he— So what then, does he already have his soulmate, he wants to trade them for you?”

“Certainly not,” Sherlock scoffs, “the administration would never stand for his being matched.”

Oh, great. Great. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any more shadowy and weird. Sherlock continues pacing, seemingly unaware that he’s said anything out of the ordinary.

“ _Sherlock._ ”

“Hm?”

He stops in the middle of the floor, which is a nice gesture, but his eyes have that wildness to them that tells John he’s thinking mostly about the case. Still, take the chance and run with it.

“I thought the government was in the business of _helping_ people find their soulmates,” John says skeptically, “not keeping them apart.”

“Typically yes,” Sherlock dismisses as he resumes his strange walk, “except in certain instances.”

Trying not to let his shock and dismay show too clearly, John thinks back to his first conversation with Mycroft. “Those people the government monitors,” he recalls, “the ones they let get away with killing people who aren’t…essential. What is that, some kind of conditional, ‘We’ll let you go about your ridiculously illegal business as you please but good luck finding your soulmate’?”

“Obviously,” Sherlock mutters. “Think it through, it’s perfectly rational.”

Scowling, John chooses not to respond to the implication about his reasoning capabilities. But fine, he’ll try his hand. Putting aside the fact that it’s evidently the government’s usual routine to decide who should be encouraged to find their soulmate and who should be Not Allowed (“for the public good,” probably), he tries to remember as much of Moriarty’s ramblings as he can to sort through the situation as it stands.

The national government is making a concerted effort to prevent Moriarty from finding his soulmate; assume, for all intents and purposes, that they’ve succeeded. Moriarty probably doesn’t care, but what does that mean in broader terms? In the eyes of society, Moriarty isn’t acting at his full potential, but he can’t possibly be bothered with the masses’ opinion of him; no one who would hire him would check those kinds of references. They’d just be concerned with his discreetness, which seems top-notch. But Moriarty went out of his way to draw Sherlock’s and John’s attention to people doing crazy and dangerous things because they thought their soulmates were in danger, even going so far as to kill because of it.

Maybe Moriarty thinks soulmates are an inconvenience? On the lunatic fringe, there’s no corporate ladder to climb, so they don’t serve much of a practical purpose, and like Sherlock, Moriarty seems to be the only member of his chosen field, so there isn’t any competition to best, either. While there’s scholastic evidence that soulmates are beneficial to one another’s productivity, which Moriarty would probably appreciate (although certainly he thinks he’s above needing that kind of crutch), a soulmate could be a dangerous distraction in a field involving so much subterfuge and murder; was Moriarty trying to tell Sherlock to get rid of John? But he didn’t know about John when he killed Susanna Walker; none of them did. So then—

Wait. Wait a second. Of course.

“He doesn’t think you’re soulmates,” John repeats to Sherlock’s indifference. “He knows he’ll never find his soulmate.”

“Obvious,” Sherlock murmurs.

“But he wants you.”

Sherlock’s eyes flash and he grins.

“Well put.”

“He’s not going to have you.”

Though his tone is blasé, the quickness of John’s response seems to surprise them both. Sherlock blinks a few times in rapid succession and John glances to the side with his features twisted up uncomfortably.

“Sorry about that.”

Sherlock looks confused by his own emotions, but he shakes his head all the same. “No, it’s…it’s fine.”

Okay then.

Before the silence can become too awkward, John poses his next question: “What does he want you _for?_ ”

Sherlock sets his mouth in a grim line, tilting his face in just such a way that the shadows across it seem to darken. “I don’t know.” He goes back to the sofa and sits heavily, bringing his hands together in front of his lips. “I don’t like not knowing.”

This is no good. The fervency has gone out of Sherlock’s bearing, the fire from his eyes, and John knows, absolutely _knows_ that he’s beating himself up for not being ten steps ahead. He had it in the palm of his hand, he was on the cusp of decoding all of it, and now, back to the start. That’s not true, of course; one stumbling block, or whatever it is, doesn’t undo all the work he’s already done, all the information he’s already uncovered, but John remembers the time before Sherlock deduced their soulmate status, how furious he was at himself for jumping to conclusions in the case as he lost control of his own rapid-fire deductions.

_Ask me something else._

“Why you?”

Sherlock raises his eyes, just his eyes, to glare over his tented fingers ( _I know what you’re doing_ ), but John presses on anyway.

“The best, I mean the _best_ Yarders can lose their soulmates and carry on working. Wouldn’t that be more in line with everything he’s done up to now? Taking on someone who had a soulmate and lost them?” John turns to the window and sighs sharply, then looks back to Sherlock. “You’d never had one at all when he started, what made you so special?”

His eyes widen just slightly, then glaze over, and Sherlock murmurs something—John sees his lips move, but the words are inaudible. Desperate to ask, John sits on his hands instead.

It takes a minute, but Sherlock speaks again (if only it were helpful): “Why can’t I _remember?_ ”

Can’t remember? They just met him yesterday, John remembers everything pretty clearly; surely Sherlock does too, plus a bunch of other details, probably.

Shutting his eyes tightly, Sherlock rattles his head a few times. “Our first _real_ meeting, he said. He’s afraid he’s wasted _all this_ _time,_ why can’t I _remember!_ ”

There’s a weird stinging coldness that seeps into the air as John understands Sherlock’s madness, his fury and confusion. All this time they’ve been hunting Moriarty, hunting this lunatic, this irredeemable bastard, trying to pick up clues as they go, learn on the road, and all this time, he and Sherlock have already met. Moriarty gave Sherlock the clue already, the biggest one, without telling him when or where or how or why, and it’s probably already gone forever.

“Sherlock,” John says weakly (hold your fire, shore up the defenses). Clearing his throat, he tries again: “Sherlock. Look at me.”

“ _Everything is useless!_ ”

Oh no, not again.

“ _Sherlock._ ”

“ _What?_ ”

Sherlock’s head snaps up, his fingers splayed to frame his face and his hair falling in his eyes; John stands and takes a couple of hurried steps forward, slowing as he regains control of himself.

“Don’t,” he says stiffly, his palms up ( _stop right there_ ), “don’t…don’t do this to yourself.”

Sherlock bears his teeth, shoving his hands toward his chest. “But it’s _my_ _mistake,_ don’t you understand?”

“No.” John closes the rest of the distance and drops to his right knee, putting his hand on Sherlock’s thigh. “You didn’t do anything wrong, you’re not responsible for any of this. It’s Moriarty. Moriarty did all of it, you hear me? Sherlock.”

There’s a desperation in Sherlock that John understands without knowing how; no, he knows how, but he wishes he didn’t. Everything is exploding and for god’s sake it must have started somewhere, please, please don’t let this be random, don’t let this be out of control ( _don’t give up on me, Paul_ ), let this be something I can fix ( _hold on, Miller, just hold on_ ), let this be something I can understand.

Sherlock puts his hand over John’s and grabs it, clutching (grounding) and John doesn’t pull away, doesn’t say it hurts (it does, it really does); he’s not sure Sherlock even knows he’s doing it (something he needs), but he’ll give it to him.

“You know as well as I that he did it all _because_ of me.”

It’s hard to know if Sherlock is furious still or agonizingly sad; he’s tearing himself apart, it’s probably a lot of both. His eyes lock with John’s and John jostles his clenched hand, not to shake Sherlock off but to alert him to the connection, just in case he missed it.

“Sherlock, do you remember everyone you’ve ever met?”

“Of course not,” Sherlock says coldly ( _don’t try to distract me_ ), “that would be an appalling waste of space.”

“Do you think Moriarty would’ve introduced himself for the first time as a crazy murderer-for-hire?”

“Obviously not.”

John clenches his teeth; Sherlock is protecting himself by shoving his anger to the surface, it’s fine, give it to him ( _for now_ ). “Well then tell me why, Sherlock, you’re supposed to remember this person you might’ve run into for five seconds a decade ago while you were waiting for the crosswalk light to change?”

That sets Sherlock back a step, blinking a few times and his mouth falling open well before he answers. “We’re the same,” he murmurs.

That’s not at _all_ where this was supposed to end up.

The idea is so horrifying that it takes John a minute to react.

“Sorry, _what?_ ”

“ _I_ was just some person on the street,” Sherlock says, his volume rising in a gentle slope, “but Moriarty saw something in me, something he recognized.”

“Er, I don’t—”

“We’ll destroy each other or make each other better than ever.”

“ _What?_ ”

“We’re O’Connor and Arden,” Sherlock exclaims, “he and I!”

“ _Sherlock._ ”

Dropping his left knee as well as his right when the pressure starts to build, John looks at Sherlock imploringly. Blinking the fixated out-of-focus haze from his eyes, Sherlock leans forward eagerly.

“Their deaths were uniform compared to the others,” he says, “just the same as Walker and Waters. Testing the limits of his pull in the Yard. But he wanted to make sure I understood, ‘They killed each other,’ because they believed their soulmates were in danger.”

“O’Connor did,” John clarifies, but Sherlock shakes his head.

“They both did, they must’ve done; you asked me if a man could kill himself by seven stab wounds, _yes,_ he _can,_ but that doesn’t matter because O’Connor did it, O’Connor stabbed Arden and then shot himself because his soulmate was dead!”

This is absolute madness.

“So, it was a suicide, then,” John says as he tries to keep track of Sherlock’s narrative (it’s definitely missing some pieces).

“Technically yes,” Sherlock waves him off, “but that’s not the point, John, Moriarty and I are fighting just as they did, evenly matched on opposite sides, Arden had nearly beaten O’Connor to death before he died and then O’Connor shot himself anyway. He and I are matched just the same except now I have _you._ ”

This is all getting way too convoluted. John rocks back on his heels, shifting into a low squat. “We met after their case,” he reminds him.

“ _Yes,_ ” (Sherlock sounds much more pleased than he has any right to) “meaning you are the thing Moriarty did _not_ plan for. He never intended to frighten you off, he meant to convince me that I should give up on the notion of ever finding you because allying with a _non-_ soulmate would be so much more beneficial. Don’t you see, _you_ are my suicide, my bullet-to-the-head.”

That must’ve come out wrong. John fumbles for something, anything to say in response.

That’s not the sort of thing they prepare you for in school.

“I…I need a minute.”

Admirable loquacity, sir. Well done.

Sherlock lurches to his feet, nearly knocking John over as he sweeps off toward the kitchen. Standing by the sink (full of dirty dishes), he spins to face John with a wide smile as he proffers an empty mug.

“Tea?”

John nods absently and makes his way over to his chair.

There’s so much to process. So much. He needs to sort through it, set it out. Create the timeline, it’s helped before.

Everything is frozen solid.

_You are a liability._

Sherlock doesn’t think so, Sherlock thinks he’s useful ( _you’re my conductor of light_ ), Sherlock likes having him around ( _stay close to me please_ ), Sherlock hasn’t cast him out (not yet). But Moriarty _does_ (and you _believe_ him?) and no of course not but well actually doesn’t he have a point? Isn’t that why the highest-end citizens, the most important people go to such great lengths to hide their soulmates from the rest of the world? Keep them on retainer, about as useful as a spare tire, and go about their business as they please without a care. Isn't this _precisely_ what they’re trying to avoid? The only reason he and Sherlock haven’t had that discussion is that no one’s had any reason to suspect they’re matched (Mycroft and Greg wouldn’t tell) but _now._ Now it’s pointless, now it’s too late, now they’ve fucked it all up just by doing nothing (which is just another form of doing something).

_We’re special._

And look where it’s got you.

A muffled sort of thump as Sherlock sets the mug (not empty) on the floor (on the rug) beside John’s chair and drops down into his own, a teacup (porcelain) in one hand and his mobile in the other.

John grips the arms of the chair and wonders where his cane has gotten to.

“Sherlock.”

“Mm.”

He doesn’t look up from the phone. It’s fine. John hadn’t expected him to.

“Sherlock.”

There’s a pause, but he doesn’t respond again. Of course not, that would be stupid. No point to it.

_Breathe._

“Do me a favor.”

_Just breathe._

“Tell me to go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the BBC series, John owns a Sig Sauer P226R; it was my error not to introduce it in Chapter 1, meaning that now its ownership has shifted to Sherlock (because John suddenly owning a heretofore unmentioned firearm would be incredibly sloppy of me and is too big an omission to correct at this point). I apologize for that. (However, as Seramarias pointed out, John's owning a gun as a citizen wouldn't work well within this societal structure, so turns out it's all for the best; saved by my own lack of foresight!)


	14. there is a place where time stands still

Sherlock doesn’t tell him anything. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t make a sound.

In fact, he doesn’t move at all. Doesn’t even blink. His thumb is still posed over the screen of his mobile, hovering without so much as a quiver. The steam rising off his teacup begins to thin. John hasn’t the remotest idea of what he’s thinking.

He’s afraid to ask again.

_What do you want to hear?_

He doesn’t even know. Isn’t entirely sure why he made the request in the first place except that the only thing that matters is keeping Sherlock safe, and what other way is there? Moriarty is unpredictable and brilliant, and that makes him dangerous, and murder is clearly part of his repertoire (isn’t it? _I don’t like to get my hands dirty_ ), and John doesn’t understand (enough), and Sherlock doesn’t understand (everything), and Mycroft does understand (theoretically) but won’t _do_ anything, so…

_What do you want to hear?_

_“I won’t.”_

(Aren’t you a romantic.)

John huffs a breath through his teeth and Sherlock twitches in his seat as if shocked.

“Sherlock, we—”

“You can’t _leave._ ”

His eyes are wide and his brows drawn down, aggressive and frightened, and his words sound like an accusation, and John should’ve known he wouldn’t understand. Just because they’re _soulmates,_ well, what does that even mean? This isn’t a dime store romance novel, there’s no guaranteed happily-ever-after in the real world. (Oh, Harry, I’m sorry for the things I said, I didn’t know.)

“Think about it,” John says with a bit of a rattle in his voice. “Moriarty has to be stopped, and Sherlock, there’s no telling what he’ll do to you if he doesn’t get his way and I can’t… I can’t be responsible for your being in that kind of danger. I just can’t.”

“But I _need_ you.”

John has to laugh, even though he doesn’t want to. “God, Sherlock, no you don’t. So you make your deductions a little faster when I’m around, so what? You’ll get all your planning out of the way before you meet Moriarty again, go to him without me, you’ll have the element of surprise and you can, stop him from killing anyone else ever again, or kill him yourself, I don’t know.” He grabs at the air, a frustrated old reflex to thump his cane against the floor (carpet), landing his fist on the armrest instead. “But you can’t do anything at all if you’re dead!”

“He doesn’t want to kill me,” Sherlock snaps. “For god’s sake, John, he told us as much himself, stop being unreasonable.”

“ _Unreasonable,_ Sherlock—” John cuts himself off, shaking his head with another disbelieving laugh. “You can’t treat me like some kind of, of tool in your deductive reasoning toolkit! Look I _want_ to help you, I _do,_ but you have to remember that I am more than just another piece of data you have to account for!”

“Of course you're more than that!”

“Well you’ve got a funny way of showing it!”

This is going all wrong. (Like you had a plan.) Every word coming out of John’s mouth is the wrong color, the wrong pitch, wrong, wrong, wrong, but as he hears them tumble over each other, he knows that this discussion, if you can call it that (you really can’t), has been a long time coming (out of barely three weeks, how long has it been (feels like a lot longer (feels like a lifetime))).

Sherlock, for his part, has fallen backwards in his chair, his shoulders slouched and his jaw slack; he’s blindsided, and John wonders how they could possibly have come to this point on such different wavelengths when they’ve been so effortlessly _together_ up to now (from the beginning, then). Has it all been just an act? Was Sherlock right all along?

( _You’re here because we’re soulmates._ )

Is this all it is, all it’s ever been? Biology paired them off, you and you, and you and you, you and you and you, and they’re supposed to make the best of it, and is this what every happy marriage really comes down to? The propaganda begins early, before a child can even read in the form of television announcements and neon-colored pictographs, and then after as pamphlets and primary school lesson plans and the plot to every fucking book, television show, movie he’s ever seen.

We’re here because we were told to be.

And now he’s said his piece. He watches and he waits.

_You’re being unfair._

I know. I know.

“John,” Sherlock says severely, his posture still limp but his face set in harsh lines. “I have…reoriented myself entirely to you. Your presence has become necessary to me, my fixed point in a changing age. You are something I’ve never had before, you are the force around which I can center myself, John, I need you as I have never needed anyone before and cannot imagine needing anyone ever again.”

Beautiful, lovely words. The sentiment is sincere, there’s no doubt of that, and god, it’s all John’s ever wanted, in the end. To be needed, really, genuinely needed in that “It’s you or it’s no one” way that it never is, that no one’s ever needed him before.

“I can’t.”

_Are you listening to yourself?_

“Sherlock, you’re treating me like a _thing._ ‘Fixed point in a changing age,’ Sherlock, you’re reorienting yourself around me, well, I’m reorienting myself around you, too, I’m not a fixed anything.” John sighs to buy some time as he fumbles for the words. “And I don’t want to go, believe me, but even more than that I don’t want you to get hurt, especially _because_ of me.”

Tossing his hands into the air, Sherlock grimaces and rolls his eyes but the expression has cleared when he locks his gaze with John’s, unbalanced and terrifying.

“You think it wouldn’t hurt me to see you go?”

Please understand me.

“I think you’d be alive.”

“To what _end?_ ”

“I don’t know, the same end you’ve always had!” John drops his elbows to his thighs, feels the stab of bone to muscle as his hands fall between his knees and the energy goes out of him. “The work, then, whatever you want.”

Silence.

The air is cold and still, and John feels very much like crying, but that’s not going to accomplish anything. Sherlock stares into the fireplace, his eyes nearly closed but not all the way, and everything waits (for what).

Silence.

“You asked me,” Sherlock says to the grate as he lays his mobile on the table behind him, “what got me here. What made me…as I am.”

Oh.

Oh god.

I’m not ready.

(That’s too bad, isn’t it.)

John raises his head and watches Sherlock with all the strength he can muster.

“I made me,” Sherlock confesses. “I was young and naïve and foolish, and I did silly, stupid things for people I thought were my friends until I learned better, until I learned I could do without them. Without all of them, without anyone.”

But what about—

“No matter what I tried, I could never get rid of my brother,” he admits wryly, “but that was probably all for the best, in the end. And when he met Lestrade, well. If I couldn’t get rid of one, I didn’t have much hope of getting rid of the pair.”

He pauses, and John gives it to him without hesitation. Will give him as long as it takes.

“My brother and I didn’t meet other children while we were young.” It sounds like an old story being told for the first time; familiar, but lacking the rote of a stale fable. John is instantly rapt. “All we knew was each other, for a long while; I always tried to live up to my brother’s example, to do as well as he, or better. I won’t say I never succeeded, but on the balance I was quite a disappointment to both of us. Our parents professed to love us equally, of course, and I suspect they do, but it was never them I needed to prove myself to.”

It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going.

“I considered it a boon to myself when Mycroft left for university. I was free to refine my abilities out from under his shadow, growing as much and as quickly as I could. And I did, up to a point, though it may be said that without a goal constantly moving further from my reach, giving me something to strive for without the threat of a plateau, my motivations became increasingly obsessive, increasingly self-destructive.”

John has an irrational desire to rewind history and assure a fragile young Sherlock that he’s the worthiest person John’s ever met, for all the good it might do.

“By the time I went to university myself, I was remarkably skilled at deductive reasoning; other people were thus rendered terribly boring, so predictable and similar. Motivated by the same lusts, the same greed and stupidity and good intentions. The same stories told over and over with only the names and settings changed, and even then, not always. I had never got on especially well with other children in school, but I thought things might be different in a higher class of education, I might find people more suited to my interests, more similar to myself. More people who understood the value of their brains, who were less obsessed with finding their soulmates or becoming pointlessly wealthy or vapidly famous.”

The timbre of Sherlock’s voice asserts his disdain for the content of his words, and John viciously despises everyone Sherlock has ever met who didn’t love him dearly.

“I thought I had, for awhile. A few people who seemed at least capable of using basic reasoning skills, and a few of those who seemed interested in _me,_ of all things.” Sherlock’s lips quirk in a fleeting smile, a recognizable salve of this-doesn’t-hurt-anymore (even though it does). “Afterwards, all I thought was that I should have known, I should have seen. Mycroft would have known immediately, I told myself, would never have fallen into those traps, but I was no Mycroft. No matter how hard I tried, I would never be his equal, and look what all my efforts had gotten me: used as a parlor trick, to settle bets between friends, disprove cheating boy- and girlfriends’ excuses. I was reviled; they all ran the other way when they saw me coming, warned each other away from me until they needed my talents for some reason or another, and suddenly all was forgiven.”

John hopes with all his might that every single one of those vermin has since died an agonizingly painful death.

“There was one man,” Sherlock goes on with just the smallest lift in his tone, “in my last year, who tried for awhile to look beyond all the rumor and the warning. Victor. He was bright enough, a chemistry student—that was how we met, away from the social milieu where we could speak in a language of pure academia, and after some time he thought us quite close. He claimed to always score better on the lab work we had done together and fooled himself for awhile into believing we were soulmates when in fact the only reason he did better when we worked together was that I corrected all his mistakes, but he tried to persuade me to his line of thinking, and at the time I was so pleased that he worked with me because he _wanted_ to that I never pointed out the flaw in his rationale. We lost touch after graduation and I assume he figured it out himself.”

All the better if he’s spent the rest of his life mourning the loss of his other half, John thinks spitefully.

“Victor was the one who introduced me to the concept of using cocaine to heighten my capabilities,” Sherlock adds on as an afterthought (oh yes, in case you were wondering). “He liked to take a bit before his most important exams, convinced by that point that it was necessary for his survival; he had been using it for years, I gathered, picked up the habit from an older brother or some such, I never bothered to ask. It didn’t take me long to determine that whatever benefits other people claimed to be getting from their soulmates could be substituted for with a seven percent solution; I had never put much effort into searching for you before that, but once I found a reasonably reliable source of acquisition of the drug, I deemed the hunt nothing more than a waste of time and resources which could be more beneficially dedicated elsewhere. I never wanted for friends, never indulged in that cliché of longing for what I thought had been denied to me, lusting after some archetypal fantasy, I was…perfectly satisfied.”

If John ever meets Victor, he’ll set him on fire himself. Sherlock will keep him out of prison, probably, or Mycroft.

“Mycroft made every effort to help me quit,” Sherlock allows, in case John was thinking poorly of him (not as such). “Tried to convince me, force me, bribe me, distract me. Whatever you can imagine, but as you know, I’m sure, no one deceives like an addict in need of a fix. It wasn’t until he and Lestrade crossed paths that he found a reasonably reliable means of keeping me clean; even the work wasn’t as foolproof as they would’ve liked, but it was better than anything he’d tried previously, and it forced the two of them together. Mycroft determined almost immediately that they were soulmates and they were married at once, primarily a political maneuver, but it wasn’t until a year or so later that they actually fell in love, or began to.”

A subtle note changes as Sherlock describes his brother’s affairs; John isn’t sure quite what it means, but Sherlock falls silent then, his story presumably complete. ( _And that’s my life before you._ )

A tremendous weight has been lifted from John’s shoulders even as another of a vastly different shape is placed in its stead. He ought to say something, but any words he could offer would be miserably insufficient.

Still.

His voice comes out raw and tender, as though emerging from years of disuse.

“Thank you,” he says, and it’s inadequate but it’s the only thing in the world that fits at all. Sherlock’s answering smile is wan and forced.

“I thought you should have all the facts at your disposal.”

_Now being the most appropriate time?_

“Mm.”

Silence. John wants the fire to be lit and can’t bring himself to move.

“Have you told that to anyone else before?”

“The whole of it?”

John looks out the window over Sherlock’s shoulder. “Any of it.”

Sherlock breathes out loudly. “No. Mycroft’s told Lestrade all he knows, but…no.”

“Mm.”

Without any real effort, the story is sealed in John’s memory forever. If he ever decides to build a mind palace for himself, the History of Sherlock will probably have its own wing.

“Sherlock.”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to tell me that if I leave, you’ll start using cocaine again?”

Sherlock sighs as though he wishes John hadn’t asked that question.

“That wasn’t the point.”

“But is it true?”

He sighs again, a delaying tactic.

“I… It wouldn’t be my intention to do so.”

John nods, and they’re still not looking at each other but Sherlock seems to understand.

“You said I should go back to whatever end there was before you,” Sherlock reminds him, back to more or less his normal volume. “That seems a fairly substantial change at this juncture, and I wanted you to know what you were talking about.”

“I appreciate it,” John says, hoping it doesn’t sound as sarcastic as it feels.

“I hope you won’t think I was trying to manipulate your emotions,” Sherlock says, “and I realize that may be difficult to believe, but…it’s all just information.”

“I believe you.” John tilts his head as the sun rises to a certain angle and everything suddenly becomes much brighter. “At least I think I do.”

Sherlock nods.

“John,” he says, “I don’t want you to go.”

“I got that.”

Exhaling sharply, Sherlock grates his nails across the leather of his chair. “ _But,_ ” he intones, “I will not stand in your way. I won’t ask Mycroft to track you down, I won’t employ a covert network of spies to discern your location, I won’t kidnap you myself, or any other thing you might conceive of and convince yourself to fear. So.”

John feels as though the wind has been knocked out of him. The story suddenly makes all the sense in the world, all the words it was made up of and all the ones it wasn’t.

_I trust you._

( _Please be kind._ )

A fire would be stifling, surely the cause of suffocation. John is glad it isn’t lit.

The steam has stopped rising from Sherlock’s porcelain cup, and John remembers the mug on the floor beside him. Even when he asked for it, he never really intended to drink it.

Silence.

The sun keeps crawling across the sky, the light fading as clouds move in and cast matte shadows over everything.

For the next minute, time moves in skips and starts, and John isn’t sure how it began but he knows how it ends.

What happens is this:

Although it’s gone tepid and there are bits of leaves settled on the bottom of the cup, Sherlock finishes his tea and stands, swirling the dregs. It’s a nice cup, part of a set, and he prefers to have the whole thing clean and ready for service, to avoid being taken by surprise. It’s just one small cup, it won’t take a moment.

He looks down at John, who stares dazedly out the window and hasn’t spoken or moved in quite some time. Sherlock doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t know what else to say; if John is thinking, he wouldn’t want to interrupt. Nevertheless, John’s chair sits between him and the kitchen, so should he pass on John’s left or right? Does it matter?

No, it doesn’t. He’ll pass on John’s right, where there’s more space.

Sherlock is quite tall and has fairly long legs, and he’s beside John’s chair in three steps, just beginning the fourth when John’s left hand closes around his right wrist and pulls. The teacup falls from Sherlock’s hand as he grasps the chair’s arm, his left hand landing clumsily on the backrest and stinging his wrist somewhat but that’s really quite secondary because John’s right hand is around the back of Sherlock’s neck, guiding him down to just about the right place to kiss him soundly on the mouth.

It’s not especially sentimental; it’s a good enough kiss, the technique is adequate considering the difficulty of the angle and Sherlock’s utter unpreparedness, but their eyes remain open and their mouths remain closed and John has a determination about him that broadcasts loud and clear that romanticism is not the point.

After a moment, John draws back just enough to break the contact and leave a little space between them. His hand at the nape of Sherlock’s neck slides up toward his hair, the pads of his fingers massaging lightly, and Sherlock can’t be comfortable standing like that but he doesn’t make any efforts to move. The last drops of tea spilt a damp spot on John’s trousers, the teacup rests against his foot, and there’s not a reason to, precisely, but John and Sherlock both breathe heavier than before.

There’s no right place to go from here, but there’s no wrong place, either (no one saw it coming, no one was prepared). John blinks a couple of times and considers what it would mean if he were to smile (what kind?), but decides against it.

“Not leaving,” he says instead (a little bit to himself).

Incredibly, unnecessarily slowly, Sherlock lowers himself to his knees, careful to avoid the mug of tea and still clutching the back and side of the chair, respectively. John tries to get a read on his reaction and fails spectacularly.

“Okay?”

(Was that? Is it? Are you?)

Another beat before Sherlock, his eyes narrowed, searching, takes John’s face between his hands, and one more before they draw together again, the persistent attraction of magnetic forces, _yes this is how it’s supposed to be, I’m so glad you found me._

Sherlock tastes like cigarette smoke and Listerine and John adds it to the History of Sherlock as he tilts his head to press them closer.

_Here we are._


	15. a world in which people suffer knowingly

The moment ends naturally as they come apart by mutual unspoken agreement. John’s thumb strokes Sherlock’s wrist, fitting the grooves of the radius as he opens his eyes to find Sherlock watching him curiously.

“Okay?” he asks again, though the question means something entirely different this time, moving forward instead of backward. ( _It’s easier to ask permission than forgiveness._ ) Sherlock’s left hand cups John’s chin and then falls to the armrest.

“Thank you,” he says, and John smiles, not wide but deep, forming wrinkles around his eyes.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” he says quietly, and Sherlock grimaces.

“Not often.”

John ducks his head and breathes out through his nose. “God,” he says over a chuckle, “you and I have got a long ways to go, haven’t we?”

“I want to know everything about you,” Sherlock murmurs, a private thought made public, and John smiles again.

Sounds like a plan.

After a pause to drink it all in, Sherlock bites his tongue and breathes out around it. “Did you ever in all your life think it would come to this?”

“Sherlock,” John deadpans, looking up, “I thought I’d killed you in Afghanistan. I thought you’d found the love of your life and given up on me entirely. I thought we’d meet one day at a DOH summons and you’d reject me on sight.”

“No, then.”

“No, I didn’t think it would ever come to this.” John drops his hand from Sherlock’s nape, laying it along the back of the armchair. “Did you?”

“I don’t think I’ve correctly predicted a single thing about you.”

John isn’t sure why the answer floors him, precisely, but it absolutely does. His lack of response makes Sherlock nervous, if his furrowed brow and slightly pouting lips are any indication, but he doesn’t know exactly how to explain himself; the most obvious thing to do, then, is kiss him.

It works extremely well. They’ll be experts in no time.

Not right now, though. There’s a case on, and all that.

“Sherlock,” John hedges after they part again and take a few seconds to catch their breaths, “what did you mean? Before?”

_You are my suicide._

The words hurt to hear, even just in his head, but their meaning must have been profound and John needs to understand. (Please don’t let it be awful.) Sherlock’s mouth twists into an uneasy frown and he withdraws his hand from John’s face, extracting it from his grip and lifting the cold mug off the floor as he stands.

“I don’t suppose you wanted this after all,” he says, already turning toward the kitchen.

“Sherlock, please.”

“Do you really not understand?”

With tremendous effort and what feels like a small rush of blood to his head, John suppresses his instinct to answer that of _course_ he doesn’t understand, that that’s precisely the _problem_ between them, that they may be soulmates but that’s not how this _works_ and Sherlock is going to have to get used to it if this partnership (or whatever it’s becoming) is going to endure in the long term. Instead he tries to read between the lines as it seems no one has ever bothered to for Sherlock, as he’s probably always wished someone would even try. (If you don’t do it, who else is there?)

What he finds doesn’t make it all better, but it’s a bridge over the first gap, up to the starting point.

_This hurts me too. I don’t want to hear the words out loud. Let’s hide it where it won’t become real._

But that’s not quite all.

Smaller, quieter, underneath all the immature defenses and futile efforts at avoidance, John finds the encouragement he needs, the final push toward resolution without the paralyzing fear that a single misstep will destroy this fragile thing they’ve started before it has a chance to build.

_I’ll protect you._

“No I don’t understand. But I’d like to.”

_And I will protect you right back._

Sherlock goes to the kitchen sink and dumps the mug’s contents over a pile of dirty plates, then sets it on the counter.

“O’Connor killed Arden because Moriarty told him that Arden had kidnapped his soulmate,” he recites matter-of-factly to the faucet; John twists round in his seat to face Sherlock as he goes on: “Arden beat O’Connor nearly to death presumably for the same reason but died before he could complete his task; if they had kept their heads and talked to one another, they would have been able to determine that the information was false, but with their soulmates’ lives supposedly on the line, they were incapable of acting rationally. Once Arden was dead, Moriarty doubtless informed O’Connor that his soulmate was already dead as well; of course, that was a lie, considering that his soulmate was the client responsible for the job, but the point is that the conception caused O’Connor to commit suicide.” He takes a small breath that John would’ve missed if he hadn’t been watching, and finishes tersely: “To shoot himself in the head.”

Ah.

Well, that explains the unfortunate wording, if not the intended significance.

“You said Moriarty doesn’t want to kill you,” John says. “What does he want, then, for you to kill yourself? Because of me?”

Sherlock meets his gaze then, still without leaving the kitchen. “He doesn’t want me to die unless it’s with him,” Sherlock clarifies. “Those circumstances would be enormously dire, as I don’t suspect he’s eager to take his own life, and I doubt he anticipates they’ll ever arise; no, what I said was that Moriarty hadn’t accounted for you already being part of my life. When he began these murders, when he killed Walker, he expected to need to convince me that finding you wasn’t worth my time and be done with it, but since you _are_ here, you…make me dangerous to him.”

John turns a little more in his chair and frowns, bringing his other arm to the backrest and flexing his shoulders. “Not because of your enhanced deduction.”

“He wouldn’t consider that a factor,” Sherlock dismisses easily. “No, Moriarty thinks terribly poorly of soulmate partnering; his fear is that I’ve been poisoned against logical reasoning, that I’ve allowed my emotions to get in the way of my greater purpose, my true calling.”

It’s oddly comforting that Sherlock has so easily slipped from the tenderness they shared a moment ago to his more familiar concise rationality, effectively disproving Moriarty’s concerns without even trying. _He is still the man you’ve come to know._ John grins fleetingly as the thought crosses his mind, then nods. “He thinks I’ve already destroyed you before he got his fair shot.”

Sherlock smirks down at the floor, endearingly shy and accidentally coy. “I don’t believe he’d consider it in those terms.”

“Well what does he know.”

“Not much.”

It’s not funny, and it’s not true, but they share a giggle all the same, smiling fondly at one another; this is hell, what we’re going through, but at least we’re going through it together.

Sherlock clears his throat and strolls back to his chair as John turns around to sit properly.

“The essence of it is that Moriarty considers you my greatest weakness whereas you are in fact my greatest strength,” Sherlock rattles off, sitting and casually tenting his fingers before him as though he hasn’t just said something remarkable. “The question now is, whenever we next do battle with him, should we or should we not go out of our way to conceal the fact that we are no longer partners merely in biological dictation.”

John tilts to the side and rests his cheek on his fist. “You think we can?”

When Sherlock casts his eyes down for a moment before he answers, John has an abrupt realization that by not arguing Sherlock’s assessment of their relationship, he’s just passed some sort of test. Certainly they kissed—three times, thank you, or two and a half, depending on your assessment—and have bared themselves to each other to some pretty remarkable depths, especially in the last few hours, but Sherlock’s mistrust runs extraordinarily deep (understandably so) and John really has no right to expect him to shake that off so quickly. Sure, they’ll go against Moriarty together any day of the week, putting their lives on the line without question, but Sherlock’s heart and soul are another matter entirely.

“I believe we have a precedent,” Sherlock dodges. “You recall our first meeting,”

“Yesterday.”

“wherein his attentions were completely focused on me? He saw you, of course, and easily identified our status—I wouldn’t have brought a gratuitous companion in any circumstances, obviously, except under extreme duress, which I was not, and you’re clearly not a police officer of any sort—but he likely still believes he can ‘save’ me, as he perceives it.”

“I thought he knew I’d ruined you.”

“No he _fears_ you’ll ruin me, he doesn’t think it’s already been done. Certainly he prefers to think I’m quite resentful toward you, that we’ve been partnered against at least my will.”

This is possibly the strangest conversation John has ever been a party to.

“No,” Sherlock goes on, dismissing his own idea, “you’re a terrible actor, that would never work.”

“Thanks, Sherlock,” John says sarcastically, trying to think of any time he’s even had reason to do any acting or lying recently and coming up empty. “That’s very nice.”

“Oh, go on,” Sherlock retorts, “you must _know._ ”

Yeah, maybe he does, but…still.

Funny to think that Sherlock’s contempt for social decorum was one of the things that attracted John to him in the first place.

“So what do we do, then,” John ponders, laying his forearms on his knees and leaning forward, “barge on into his hideout and tell him he’d best leave us alone if he wants to keep going around killing people and corrupting the government?”

“Or what, we’ll kill him?” Sherlock asks rhetorically. He flaps his hand as if to wave the idea away. “We haven’t got any leverage if he doesn’t think he can have me.”

John frowns and shifts, resting his weight on his right arm. The solution is so clear that Sherlock must have already thought of it, but why hasn’t he said as much? Is it because he finds it as objectionable as John does? That’s hardly a reason to exclude something so practical. (Or to avoid showing off.)

“So you’ve got to go alone, then.”

Dropping his hands to his lap, Sherlock rolls his eyes and scowls.

“You know you do.”

He doesn’t offer a response, which is response enough for John.

_I’d rather not._

For one vicious, excruciating, horrifying instant, John understands, is even tempted to _agree_ with Moriarty’s opposition to soulmate partnering. Sherlock _did_ already know the solution to their problem, likely well before it occurred to John, but he didn’t bring it up because he didn’t, what, want them to be apart? Want to potentially put John in danger? Something like that, anyway. As for himself, John feels a persistent pull in the back of his mind, a nagging voice reminding him that this is a bad idea, that they need to find an alternative, even as the rest of him knows that this is the only way.

That’s all very well and good for now; they’re at home, just the two of them, no deadlines creeping along the horizon, no bomb under the floorboards or poison in the vents. But what if they needed to come up with a plan on the spot, snipers’ sights illuminating their foreheads and the clock counting down to zero? If that instant came and they both knew it, _I have to throw myself into the lion’s den to save you,_ what would they do about that? Would Sherlock be able to let him go? Would John?

_Idiots for letting their preoccupation stand in the way of their work._

Maybe there’s something to that after all.

“There’s no real danger,” Sherlock tells the coffee table. “Moriarty doesn’t want to kill me, in fact he would prefer not to, so even if he has his gun, that could only be for show, and given that Mycroft is our client, he’d certainly provide any additional support we requested. Any sort of artillery, any communication devices, it would be like you were with me all along.”

John nods slowly, his eyes losing focus.

Wait a second—

“Mycroft’s whole problem is that we can’t kill Moriarty,” John says sharply, and Sherlock’s eye twitches. “Because they, whoever’s keeping track of him, his, his handlers, they don’t know how far his reach extends, right, they don’t know whose life is being held in the balance or what kind of information might be distributed if he died. He could threaten to kill you or Lestrade or any of us, but he doesn’t have to; he’ll just threaten to destroy your brother, won’t he.”

“He can’t possibly have any ruinous information about Mycroft or he’d’ve already made that clear,” Sherlock says, too fast, and John shakes his head.

“It doesn’t have to be _about_ him if he’s in charge of this group that’s supposed to be monitoring Moriarty and god knows whoever else.” John sidles forward a bit and puts his hand out to emphasize his words. “Look, Sherlock, I know you think it’s normal, or necessary or whatever, but if it got out to the general public that the government has this program of letting murderers run around London free as birds because they only go after targets off some special low-priority list, there’s gonna be a civilian uprising and I don’t think even Mycroft can smooth that one over.”

“I _know,_ ” Sherlock snarls, his trembling hands thumping down on his legs. “Don’t you think I _know?_ ”

What was— Wait, was that—

Yes. Yes it was.

Fear.

John pauses, then leans back in his chair.

Sherlock is _terrified._

Of _what?_ He’s right that Moriarty isn’t a physical danger to them, and yes, Mycroft’s position is potentially on the line, but he’ll probably land on his feet; Sherlock doesn’t have to worry for his brother’s safety, or the advantages his position affords them (such as money, most likely). There may be a period of transition, but those things happen all the time, and surely the Holmes family has some sort of fallback plan set up, some nest egg situation. Anyway, there’s enough governmental subterfuge in play, as John’s recently been made aware, that even if their shady practices come to light and Mycroft has to take the blame, he’ll be kept on _somehow_ with the public none the wiser.

Maybe as a consultant.

So then what else is there?

“Sherlock…”

“ _Don’t._ ”

Right, of course. We won’t stand for that, though, will we, Captain?

“Sherlock, I’m just trying to help you.”

“Oh, that’s all anyone is ever trying to do.”

The words are so spiteful, the tone so full of hate, and John promptly wishes he’d never said anything. Wishes he’d never forced Sherlock’s hand into telling the story of his past, wishes he’d never kissed him, wishes he’d never asked about Moriarty’s plan, how they’re supposed to stop him. Rewind, double time, sit down to breakfast as you should’ve intended, as any normal person would, let Sherlock shoot the wall, let him blow the whole thing up if it makes him happy, and just anything other than this.

Oh, please. You don’t want that and let’s not pretend that you do.

Gripping the armrests of his chair, John sets his jaw and looks to a point slightly to the left of Sherlock’s eyes.

“Look,” he says coldly. “I want to help you. You can believe it, or you can decide not to, but this is, this is shit, this situation we’re in, getting worse by the minute, apparently, and I don’t like it any more than you do, but we need to figure out how to solve it. I’m not just saying this because I think it’s for your own good, or whatever you’re telling yourself I meant, so whatever it is you’re afraid of, you need to just…figure out how to get over it. Okay? Because I’m here for you, I _am,_ but I can’t help if you won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Dear, dear, that was the wrong thing to say.

Sherlock’s presence doesn’t really change, his expression or his bearing, but he catches John’s gaze and he stares, and he stares. His pale eyes have the same unblinking focus and illumination that they do during his deductions, when he’s in his mind palace, but it’s not directed inward this time; whatever he’s thinking, it’s a confirmation he’s been on the lookout for, the last piece of a jagged puzzle dug out from between the couch cushions and slotted perfectly into place.

All John knows is that he’s done something, or maybe undone something, that will take a tremendous effort to mend.

(Done _what?_ )

Even without the fire, the air is too heavy, too thick. Sherlock doesn’t speak and John stands stiffly.

“I…need to go out for a bit,” he says on the way to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. Sherlock’s gaze follows him, he feels it, but Sherlock still refuses to speak. Great, this is great.

“Be back later.”

Nothing.

That’s all there is for it, then.

Okay, John. It was a good effort.

(Say that to my face.)

_Nice try._


	16. a world where life is tentative

On the other side of the door, John thinks about leaving. Not forever, just for a coffee or something. He also thinks about not leaving, thinks about going back inside and having it out with Sherlock, blowing away the fog and sorting out wherever their signals got crossed. It’s an option, and a viable one, but it could easily make things much, much worse, and the notion of having some time to clear his head without the threat of being summoned down to the sitting room before he’s ready is awfully tempting.

At the bottom of the stairs, John thinks about going back. He even looks over his shoulder, though all that’s visible is the first landing. Feeling stupidly like a movie cliché, he shakes his head, grabs his Haversack, and goes out to the stoop, undecided as to how hard to pull the door shut behind him and delaying so long that it falls closed on its own.

Though he doesn’t bother to check, John imagines that Sherlock has risen and gone to the window to look out at him, to see which way he turns or watch how indecisively he procrastinates before he goes anywhere. He probably isn’t really looking. But what would he think if he was? Should John go right, maybe hop on the Tube and see where it takes him? Left, maybe pop in at Speedy’s for that coffee? Straight into Regent’s Park, maybe have a wander to calm down?

The idea of heading off to a destination unknown isn’t especially appealing, and after the tea he didn’t drink, a coffee seems somehow dishonest. Walk in the park it is, then.

The sun is on its way down and the clouds are still thick; John hunches his shoulders and stuff his hands into his coat pockets as he crosses the street. There’s a nasty feeling in his gut not too dissimilar from the one that follows after a particularly bad nightmare, and he sucks in a deep breath that hurts his throat. It’s too cold for this sort of thing. This sort of tantrum.

No. No, no, stop that right now, John Watson, this is nobody’s tantrum, nobody’s fit of pique. This is two people being swept along by circumstances largely out of their control and trying to rush something that should properly take much longer. Lucky couples, couples who aren’t being stalked by murderous psychopaths, they get their honeymoon periods, their flowers and chocolates and tropical vacations, but you, sir, you are getting down to work, just as you’ve always wanted.

It’s true, actually. As a teenager, and more frequently in medical school and the army, John heard stories from matched colleagues and comrades about their perfect mates, their perfect lives, everything just sort of falling into place after they found “the one,” and every single one of them left him _terrified._ Not the normal fears, not “What if we hate each other,” “What if she dies before we meet,” “What if he’s in a relationship and doesn’t want to get out of it,” “What if they want something I’m not.” John was never afraid of those things; if he and his soulmate got on, well, good for them, and if they didn’t, at least they’d know. It’s all just bureaucracy when you get right down to it.

The thing that kept John up at night was: “What if they’re _boring?_ ” What if the Universe had finished with John Watson, taken a step back, and said to itself “You know what this bloke needs? A white picket fence in the suburbs and a nice office job, that’ll do him right.” What if it had found some girl, or some guy, or whatever, who dreamed of stability and security, who dreamed of a charming button-down life straight out of a magazine, a movie from the 1950s, just waiting for the soulmate to come along and make it all possible? What if _he_ was that soulmate?

God, he would hate that.

Wouldn’t he?

And what if he _didn’t?_ What if he met this person and they got on like a house on fire and all he wanted to do was make their dreams come true? What if their smile lit up his days and he spent his waking hours waiting to come home to them at night, fantasizing about cuddling up on the sofa in front of the telly with a bowl of popcorn and a kiss on the cheek? What then?

Soulmates sounded _awful._

And then there was Sherlock.

Imperious, arrogant, pompous, rude Sherlock.

Determined, brilliant, exciting, sincere Sherlock.

Wounded, sensitive, reluctant, fragile Sherlock.

His soulmate Sherlock, who spent years of bad relationships learning that other people are to be used but never trusted, who survived his childhood inundated by the same tripe as the rest of them about finding his soulmate to fix every problem he’d ever had. Sherlock, who surely realized what a lie that was, surely convinced himself that his soulmate would be just the same as all the others, that no one would ever want him as he was.

If you ever do decide to trust someone, be prepared for them to break your heart because you know, you _know_ it’ll happen, sooner or later, and you want to be prepared.

John coughs an uncomfortable laugh and shakes his head. Yeah, he’s been there. Sure, in the RAMC, refusing to trust your unit is the surest path to death, but after that. Well.

A medal, they said, a medal will help. Therapy, they said, therapy will help. A job, they said, a nice steady job will help. A cup of tea, they said, a cup of tea and a good night’s sleep will help. Forgetting the things you’ve seen, they said, pretending it never happened will help.

Following the rules, they said, following the rules will help.

Start a bit of trouble, Sherlock said. Murder and mystery and subterfuge will be fun, let’s go catch a psychopath.

What could possibly have gone wrong.

John sits on a cold bench and looks out at the place where the treetops meet the sky. That’s the real problem, isn’t it? They’ve been trying to catch Moriarty and just sort of assuming their relationship would fall into place alongside because…soulmates. Because they were told it would, told that their compatibility would override any obstacles in their way, told that magic doesn’t take effort. They’re smarter than that, they always have been, but they’re not perfect, and god, it would just be so convenient.

The notion of wooing Sherlock with stereotypical roses and candies is ludicrous, of course, but what kind of effort _have_ they put in? Not a lot, and even then, only as a last-ditch effort in the face of some phenomenal cock-up or other.

Is _that_ what Sherlock is afraid of? That they fit, they work, they match, but they aren’t perfect?

Abruptly and without context, a thought, a memory enters John’s head and it takes a moment to place it.

_I’m off. To bed._

Back at the beginning, back when they were still figuring all of this out, still trying to determine Moriarty’s motivations, much less his identity. At the end of a very long day, the day Sherlock cured him of his limp, the day before Sherlock told him they were soulmates. Trying to leave Sherlock in peace, trying to give him space to continue his racing deductions, trying to get a good night’s sleep (and he hadn’t).

_You’ve stayed because this case is engagement._

Skittish and high, lacking a filter even more than usual, Sherlock had _told_ John his fears, _told_ him, and John had shakily assured him he was wrong and assumed that to be the end of it.

_Suddenly all was forgiven._

Sherlock had it pounded into him that he was needed, special, a friend, all of that, until it stopped being convenient, so he’s taught himself to stop believing it. Sherlock trusts _actions,_ not platitudes.

John leans back, his occipital bone banging against the bench and his brain throbbing dully.

God, they really suck at this.

It’s weirdly disappointing, actually; Sherlock, his dark, brooding hero, is felled by something as pedestrian as a miscommunication and the immaturity bred into him by the same intensely regimented society they all grow up in. But hold on there, John, count your blessings; would you rather he be felled by a literal bullet to the brain instead of the metaphorical?

Giggling, John takes a moment to appreciate that no one is else privy to his private thoughts.

For a little while longer, John sits on the bench in the park in the cold, blowing streams of mist into the dark and watching them dissipate as his fingers begin to numb. What will he be walking back into, exactly? Will Sherlock be receptive? Give him the silent treatment? Believe him when he says he’ll stay?

Probably not that last bit, but. They’ll work through it somehow.

By muscle memory and the light of the streetlamps, John picks his way back to Baker Street and stops in front of the door.

Is Sherlock standing at the window? Has he been checking every half hour, down to the minute, waiting for John’s inevitable return? (Did he think that it wasn’t?) Has he been there the entire time, watching the hustle and bustle of street traffic as his mind whirls and races to figure out how to thwart Moriarty’s plans?

Is he a bloody damsel in distress? Get ahold of yourself, Watson, and get your head out of the clouds.

Putting his key in the lock, John takes a breath before he opens the door.

At the bottom of the stairs, he thinks about going back.

Should he tell Sherlock what he’s figured out? Or thinks he’s figured out, anyway. Should he wait for Sherlock to bring it up? No, they need to sort this _now._ Should he tell Sherlock, again, that he won’t leave him on a whim? If he hasn’t believed it yet, there’s no reason to think this time will be different.

On the wrong side of the door, he stops to listen.

Sherlock plays his violin.

The piece is low, dreamy, melodious; John doesn’t remotely recognize it, which doesn’t mean a thing, but it sounds somehow personal, if such a thing could be said of a musical score. He imagines, for some reason or another, that Sherlock composed the piece himself; no, more than that. Improvisation. It’s quite lovely.

Dropping his chin to his chest, John sighs and waits a little longer. Sherlock must know he’s there, but the music might stop if he opens the door, and, well.

Can’t put this off forever, though.

The music doesn’t stop as the door opens, and John keeps his head down as he steps inside; the floor lamp behind Sherlock’s chair doesn’t illuminate much of the room, but it might even be better this way. More focused.

Sherlock keeps playing until John closes the door again. The last note fades out and he drops his arms to his sides, the bow clumsily hitting the back of his chair as he winces.

Silence.

John shuffles his feet and takes his fists out of his pockets.

“That was beautiful,” he says inadequately. Sherlock bows.

John goes to his chair and sits.

So…

“Sorry.”

Well that was unexpected.

John looks up at Sherlock, who looks back evenly.

“ _You’re_ sorry?” John echoes, just to be sure. Sherlock closes his eyes, a valiant attempt to keep from rolling them, and John leans forward, clasping his hands in his lap.

“I don’t…know how to do this,” Sherlock says tightly, and when he opens his eyes they’re so pained, so stripped bare that John wants him to please just stop talking even though all he really wants really _needs_ is for him to keep going, keep going, this is good, this is helping.

“I don’t know how to have friends,” Sherlock scoffs, “I don’t know how to ‘be in a relationship,’ I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing.”

John thinks about Greg, and about Molly, and Mrs. Hudson, and he doesn’t say anything as Sherlock looks away, gathering his thoughts.

“I know, I am an unpleasant man to be around. And I’ve done you wrong, John, I know I have; I told myself you were an inconvenience until I could learn to control your presence, merely a power to be harnessed to speed along my deductions, make me better than before. But you are…”

John’s lips part, an aborted effort to take offence or to reassure as Sherlock clicks his tongue and catches his eye.

“You have seen the worst of me.”

_And you’re still here._

John thinks about Sherlock trying to get on with other people, incapable or unwilling to work with anyone too far below his standards because he has to be the best, he can’t afford to slow down to meet them or everything will collapse and he won’t be better, he won’t be the best, he won’t be anything. He thinks about Sherlock hiding away with his brilliance, only emerging to show off, to be in command, to make other people look like the idiots for once.

John thinks about coming home that day, finding Sherlock twitching in his chair, sweating and paranoid and furious, calculating the timing of his injection to be brilliant in time for John’s return but to keep him from finding out, to keep him from leaving in disgust. He thinks about how it never even crossed his mind to go, about fetching his laptop from his room and coming back to sit on the floor across from Sherlock as he came down, about wanting nothing more than to be there when he woke, to ask him to please never do that again because I was so scared, Sherlock, I was so scared.

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock takes the smallest of breaths and looks at him properly, their expressions equally solemn (John to keep from bursting into tears or doubling over laughing, not sure which, maybe both, and Sherlock awaiting punishment, he’ll take what he deserves).

“Sherlock, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

Breathing in deeply, Sherlock tips his head back as John allows himself a little grin.

“I don’t know that I have the most rigorous of competition,” Sherlock mutters, and John laughs.

“How about this, then: Sherlock,” John says firmly, “you are the best thing that could possibly have ever happened to me.”

“Now you’re just being spurious.”

“Look,” John says, quickly getting his giggles under control. “I’m not saying things between us are gonna be perfect all the time. Obviously they're not, that would be exhausting.”

“Dull.”

“And dull, god, can you imagine how dull that would be?”

Sherlock lays his violin on the table with a crooked smile.

“We’ll…argue,” Joh admits, “and we’ll disagree, and sometimes we’ll need our space. _But,_ we’ll have fun, and we’ll solve crimes and get in trouble, and we’ll…make fun of your brother, and we’ll be better people for having found each other. We already are, I think, I know I am. One misunderstanding doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon you, and one fight doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

Wait.

Wait.

What?

( _Shiiit…_ )

Sherlock has stopped blinking, and it’s a good thing he put his violin down or John fears he would’ve dropped it. John himself has to concentrate hard to keep from hyperventilating, and when Sherlock does eventually start speaking, he misses the first few words (but it isn’t hard to guess what they might’ve been).

“You’ll resent me. You’ll come to hate me tying you in, tying you to my madness, and you’ll want to leave but you won’t think you’re able. You’ll feel trapped and you’ll come to hate me for it.”

Oh, no you don’t.

“Sherlock, you’re not the only one getting something out of this.”

“Of course, the soulmate connection works in both directions.”

John shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant.”

Tossing his head with a frustrated little hiss, Sherlock sweeps around his chair and falls into it with a soft thud, and John flexes his left hand into and out of a fist a few times.

“Do you remember what you said to me when we first met?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “‘Afghanistan or Iraq?’”

“Not that.” John shakes his head again, a quick jerking motion. “Later, when you asked me to go with you to Cricklewood. Do you remember what you said to me?”

Clenching his teeth, Sherlock looks more like he wants to avoid falling into the trap he suspects is being set than that he doesn’t have an answer, but this time around John is determined to wait him out.

All told, it doesn’t take too long.

“‘You’re wasted in civil service,’” Sherlock recites, kindly cutting to the chase.

“Exactly. And do you know how many people had told me that, anything even remotely like that, before you?”

“A baker’s dozen,” Sherlock retorts sarcastically. John offers a thin smile and definitely doesn’t laugh behind it.

“Zero. Sherlock, you are the only person, my entire life, the _only_ person to see any worth at all in me after he found out I hadn’t found my soulmate yet.”

“Maybe I already knew.”

“You didn’t.”

Sherlock looks away contritely, a stubborn child knowing the truth but refusing to admit it, and John forces himself to keep going.

“You understand me in ways that no one else in my life ever has, in ways I don’t think anyone else is capable of doing. Not the guys in my unit, not my therapist, not the other doctors at the clinic, not Mycroft Holmes.” (One of Sherlock’s nostrils twitches in a hint of a sneer and John knows that was a good detail to throw in.) “You—well, you do talk down to me sometimes, but you’re not always wrong. Not _always,_ ” he stresses when Sherlock looks about to interrupt. “And I get it, it’s your, your thing, but I’m not an idiot, Sherlock, I’m not Anderson.”

It feels unfair to use a man he’s never met and who’s probably reasonably good at his job as the brunt of a joke like that, but Sherlock snickers, so John doesn’t much care.

“You know…so much about me, some of the things I never wanted to tell anyone,” (I’m sorry for my anger, I’m sorry for my nightmares) “and you never treat me any differently because of them, you never treat me like I’m going to break if you say or do the wrong thing. Sherlock, you cannot know how much that means to me.”

It’s difficult to tell in only the light of the floor lamp, but Sherlock’s face might be a little flushed, which is gratifying.

“So, you know, however you feel, Sherlock, about me, or anything that’s going on, it’s fine, just…please don’t think I’m here because I think I have to be, legally or socially or implicitly or whatever you might come up with. I told you, I liked you before I knew we were soulmates and I still like you after.”

Sherlock bites his lip nervously and casts his eyes down, and John takes a deep breath that he hopes isn’t as loud as it sounds to his ear.

“And…I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The apology/reconciliation piece Sherlock plays upon John’s return is, as John surmises, improvisation: “He took up his violin from the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air,—his own, no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation.” (Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur. “The Sign of Four.” _The Complete Sherlock Holmes._ New York: Barnes  & Noble, 2011. 72-141. Print.)


	17. a world in which no one witnesses the changing of the seasons

The usual thing after a declaration like that, John is given to understand, is reciprocation.

If Sherlock responds in kind, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

In the silence between them, John hears the house settle and the refrigerator motor kick and change its tune. They’re not usual, and it’s fine. It’s all fine.

Sherlock pinches the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, which John doesn’t know how to interpret, and clears his throat. When he looks up, he’s blinking rapidly, his hand hanging awkwardly in the air near his shoulder; John’s breathing rate has lowered to about five per minute.

“That’s quite a dangerous position to place yourself in.”

John smirks with a confidence mostly projected.

“Right in my comfort zone, then.”

Sherlock laughs. Good.

Questions hang over their heads, follow-ups to the conversation that parted them in the first place, places of tension and potential anger that they’d prefer to avoid. Can’t hold them off forever, though, that dam’s full to bursting.

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

Sherlock’s not laughing anymore.

Yes, you know. And I know.

Sherlock sighs.

“I’ll contact Mycroft tomorrow.”

John nods. Neither man stands, their eyes more or less in line but not exactly meeting.

“John.”

“Mm.”

Tapping his fingers idly against the armrest, Sherlock breathes in deeply through his nose, gathering his courage.

“My bed is rather large enough for two.”

_Where are you going to sleep?_

John bites the inside of his cheek and looks down, feeling like a clumsy teenager.

No need for that now.

“Dinner?”

Sherlock’s little v-shaped smile is an exercise in restraint, and John forgives him not letting himself go all at once. ( _We’ll make it up along the way._ )

“Starving.”

They maneuver into the kitchen, stealing covert glances at one another along the way, and stand awkwardly at the edge of the table until Sherlock pulls out a chair and sits, staring at his hands.

John means to make something with the peas and dried pasta he remembers buying, but come to think of it, that was about a week ago, and anyway, it’s been a long day. Instead they order from an Italian place called Angelo’s, which is close enough that they really ought to go in person. Maybe next time; Sherlock claims to know the owner, who always gives him prime seating and insists his meals be served on the house. Probably owes him a favor.

(“Yes, actually; three years ago, I proved to Lestrade that at the time of a particularly vicious triple murder, Angelo was house-breaking in a completely different part of town. How did _you_ know that?”

(“Call it a hunch.”)

\---

Without a word of discussion, Sherlock burrows under the covers on the left side of the bed while John claims the right, which is closer to the door anyway. Yeah. That’s lucky.

Lying on his back, John twists his fingers in the fabric of his vest and looks up at the ceiling.

The bed’s awfully far from the corners of the room. Right in the middle of the wall, in fact. Just sort of floating there, exposed on three out of four sides (two of them a fair bit longer than he is tall).

He tries closing his eyes and the darkness is disconcerting. Feels like he’s tipping backwards at a gradually steepening angle. ( _That shouldn’t happen._ )

“John.”

His eyes snap open; he’d assumed Sherlock was asleep already. (Why? Oh, no reason.)

“John.”

He clears his throat and coughs.

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

What’s wrong.

Nothing, nothing’s wrong. That’s exactly the problem, of course (how to explain it), nothing’s wrong except that every angle is slightly off, slightly slanted, a very little bit off center. Life and everything within it has been relocated to a ship at sea on a breezy day, which sounds ridiculous and like a stupid thing to be concerned about.

Also there might or might not be a ghost in the dresser, and regardless of how irrational and impossible that is, John can’t stop stealing glances over Sherlock’s silhouette.

“It’s fine.”

“John.”

“ _What._ ”

It comes out snappish and bitter; shouldn’t do that, Sherlock is only trying to help. John wishes he had his violin with him, although to request him to play in bed is pretty absurd.

Whether Sherlock had a retort on the tip of his tongue or not, he doesn’t respond to John’s ire, which may be for the best; no sense in starting an argument, or a conversation that has no real end. Instead, with a great if unsuccessful effort to keep the sound of shuffling sheets to a minimum, he withdraws his hand from under the covers and places it on the mattress next to John’s shoulder.

_(I don’t know what I’m doing but) I’m here if you want it._

John sighs wearily. After a requisite pause, he bends his left arm to lay his hand flat and shoves it under Sherlock’s palm, lacing their fingers together.

Sherlock makes a funny snuffling sound and turns his face into his pillow.

Goodnight, my love, and thank you for all that you are.

\---

Come morning, John lies still for awhile and appreciates that he hadn’t woken in the middle of the night. It wasn’t a _relaxing_ sleep, per se; more the dreamless lull of anesthesia, waking without the recognition of time having passed. Still, much better than certain alternatives.

As awareness returns with dragging steps, the sound of streaming water ends, more noticeable than its steady presence, and John cranes his neck to look at the bathroom door beside his head. It’s laid in with three panes of textured glass, which seems an odd choice for a bathroom, but then, why not? Doubtful Sherlock has had many people in his bedroom in the past who might’ve chanced to look in.

A blurred shape darkens the panels before Sherlock emerges, his hair neatly coiffed (how) and a bedsheet draped haphazardly over his shoulders and across his body. John yawns and shuffles back to lean against the headboard.

“’Morning.”

Sherlock smiles, partly hidden from John’s view, and smooths it away before he looks down at him. “Good morning.” He jostles the sheet a little, approaching the wardrobe against the wall. “How did you sleep?”

John grins around a puff of breath, stretching his arms out to the sides. It’s a very sweet question, sort of awkward and sort of forced but mainly concerned; after all, sleeping in the same bed was Sherlock’s idea, so he should take responsibility.

“Fine,” he answers honestly, trying not to make it sound like a brush-off. Sherlock nods and turns his attention to his clothes.

John notices the sheet slip down one of his arms, falling as he retrieves a pair of designer trousers. Come to think of it, Sherlock sleeps naked, doesn’t he? Or he did last night, at any rate. John wonders if he should find that weird or imposing, but it’s…not. He appreciates the level of comfort that it demonstrates, even if he’s not sure he deserves it.

(Hey, hey there. Don’t be so hard on yourself.)

Right.

“I’ve received notice from Lestrade,” Sherlock says as though he’s carrying on a conversation already begun. “He claims to have reconciled with my brother, but requested any updates we might have to the Dixon murder.”

Clearing his throat, John slouches forward over his knees and runs his hand through his hair. No rest for the vigilant, naturally.

“So Mycroft hasn’t told him about the…handler thing?” he asks, wishing the words would come faster and more coherently as he envies Sherlock his alertness.

“Evidently not,” Sherlock comments as he selects a black cotton button-front that’s almost but not exactly the same shade as his trousers.

“Are you going to?”

Sherlock sighs and purses his lips as he turns, his arms swinging somewhat more than necessitated by mere gravity.

“I…believe that if my brother has refrained from telling him before now, he has his reasons for it,” he admits. “If he were to divulge Moriarty’s identity, Lestrade has the means to find out enough to inform him that something underhanded is at play, and I don’t imagine he would take it terribly well.”

“A ranking police officer might not take it well that there’s an underclass of criminals committing murder with governmental sanction to keep the power structure where it is?” John muses. “Yeah, I can see where you might think that.”

Making an amused noise that isn’t exactly laughter, Sherlock sits on the bed near John’s feet. “Just so.”

John watches Sherlock’s shirt stretch across his shoulders, the buttons usually straining to keep the front closed given some relief as he wilts forward. He bites his lip and wonders how far is too far to push before he’s imposing where he has no right to be.

“Hey.”

Sherlock clasps his hands together, turning his head to fixate on a standing lamp in the corner, and John jostles his leg, nudging his foot against Sherlock’s back.

“You know, you’re doing great work with all this.”

His head dropping sharply, Sherlock either sobs or chortles, exceedingly dramatic either way, possibly a put-on but not entirely. John shoves the blankets a little ways down the bed and slides around until they’re seated side by side, his feet on the floor.

“Seriously, you are.”

This time Sherlock scoffs clearly. “We’ve still no means to stop Moriarty from killing people in the long term, and I’ve got to tell Lestrade that I don’t have any information for him regarding the identity of Dixon’s murderer, even though I _do._ ”

“I didn’t say you were doing perfect.”

It’s sort of a dangerous comment; Sherlock knows it already and is probably beating himself up over it, but if he keeps holding himself to the ridiculous standards no one has ever bothered to tell him he doesn’t have to, he’s definitely going to kill himself. Physically or metaphorically, John’s not especially fond of either.

Whether he’s interpreting it as intended because their miscommunications have gotten too out of hand to be tolerated or because it’s John, and they’re just getting better at knowing each other, it seems to strike the right chord, and Sherlock smiles softly, leaning against John’s side. John notices his temptation to reach up and pet Sherlock’s hair but doesn’t act on it.

“Alright?” he cajoles. Sherlock hums.

“Good.” He gives some leeway to his instinct and skates his nails up and down Sherlock’s back. “I have to go brush my teeth and take a piss.”

“Hopefully unrelated.”

John laughs.

\---

When John emerges from Sherlock’s bedroom, not showered but feeling refreshed enough with a splash of cold water to his face, he finds Mycroft Holmes in Sherlock’s chair and intensely regrets the decision to leave the top three buttons of his shirt undone and his cardigan open. Mycroft smirks, lazily spinning his umbrella by the handle, and John adjusts his attire.

“Pleasant night, Doctor Watson?” Mycroft asks conversationally.

John smiles thinly. “Very much so, Mister Holmes, and I appreciate your concern.”

In the kitchen by the kettle, Sherlock sniggers. Mycroft pauses his umbrella-twirling to purse his lips at his unseeing brother, then raise his eyebrows and stand with all the posturing to be expected of a visiting dignitary or an indignant border collie.

“We may as well dispense with the pleasantries entirely,” he says as though doing them a tremendous favor. “Sherlock, I suppose you’ve told John why I’m here?”

John sits in his chair and crosses his legs, looking up at Mycroft from under arched brows. “Wasn’t hard to guess,” he remarks, earning himself an insincere grin.

“No,” Mycroft returns. “I should imagine not. Now,” he takes a gliding step toward the kitchen that doesn’t cover much distance, “Sherlock, I require an update on the situation if I’m to assist you moving forward.”

Sherlock clears his throat loudly as the kettle starts to beep, _click_ as he turns it off. “We’ve discussed it and determined that I’ll be going in alone,” he says crisply. Immediately, Mycroft shakes his head.

“I’m afraid we cannot allow that,” he retorts. “Now, I am aware that John would never succeed in fooling Moriarty, so our only remaining option is for the _two of you,_ ” he looks pointedly at John, who tries to figure out when (and how) apparently everyone decided he was such a terrible actor, “to confront him with an ultimatum.”

“And let the chips fall where they may?” Sherlock asks incredulously, stalking towards him. “You can’t be serious! There is no ultimatum he would accept short of my complete surrender and I will _not—_ ”

Stopping himself short in both word and step, Sherlock scowls darkly at Mycroft and thrusts a cup of tea into his hands.

“I won’t do it.”

Mycroft sighs.

“Sherlock…”

“ _No._ ”

John raises his fist in front of his mouth and makes a noise somewhere between a cough and a hum. “What’s that?”

As he more gently hands John a second cup, Sherlock glares daggers at his brother. “Although ‘they’ would surely cede to whatever scheme he saw fit to put forth, Mycroft has in his infinite wisdom proposed that we approach Moriarty with some updated version of the agreement he is currently _ignoring._ ”

“And he thinks this time it’ll stick because…”

“Use your _brain,_ John!” Sherlock snaps, though he’s still trying to kill Mycroft long-distance, so John doesn’t take too much offense. “This isn’t a solution, it’s a stop-gap measure at _best._ He’s just trying to buy himself some time to figure out how to build a new cage for Moriarty, braid a new _leash,_ one that might actually _work_ for once. He wants to offer _me,_ for all the good it would do, wants Moriarty to think he can _have_ me. Wants me to actually give myself _to_ him until they can finally, _finally_ figure out how to clean up their own colossal mess!”

John nods soberly and sips his tea.

Dropping his gaze to his umbrella, Mycroft gives it a little twirl and then tightens his grip, his knuckles rapidly fading to white. As John watches, he takes a shallow breath and the atmosphere becomes somehow much denser.

“Sherlock,” he says, believing it sounds like a warning or a threat (he doesn’t have the leverage). “As we’ve discussed, this situation has grown…wildly out of control. In order for it to be resolved, I need to be assured that you and I are working _together._ We cannot afford any miscommunication or wrong-footedness.”

With the sort of ferocity that paints this confrontation as a long time coming, Sherlock steps away from John until he and Mycroft are nearly chest-to-chest, a snarl curling his lip unappealingly. John sets his cup down on the floor and folds his hands in his lap.

“This is your mess, brother mine,” Sherlock seethes in a voice so spiteful and so viciously low that John has to concentrate to catch all the words. “You would do well to remember that for once, you are _my_ client, and it is the bumbling and shortsightedness of the office upon which you so gleefully pride yourself that has given rise to this disaster.”

Drawing in a rattling breath through his teeth, Sherlock closes the last few centimeters between them and stabs his index finger against approximately Mycroft’s heart.

“And _don’t,_ ” he stabs again, “threaten, my _soulmate._ ”

As Mycroft briefly casts his eyes away, John has a moment of déjà vu that nearly ruins his impassive façade.

_All of this is being done for your benefit, brother mine._

Oh, Mycroft.

What have you done?

This is one step too far, this time.

“I should thank you,” John speaks up then, keeping his head lowered and clenching his hands over the armrests of his chair. “I suppose. But right now I’m finding it difficult.”

Mycroft and Sherlock both look to him abruptly, startled, but Mycroft’s wariness makes it clear that he understands the avenue John’s walking. John smirks, a bit of irony.

“You can’t protect someone you love by scaring off all the bad things in the world that are out to get them,” he muses. “I’m sure you’d like to; I’m sure that’s all you ever wanted to do, isn’t it? That’s all you know, really, throwing your weight around to line everything up just so. Using your _connections,_ your _influence._ And it’s all very impressive, to be sure, and it obviously worked out well enough for a long, long time.”

Lifting his head, John stares straight at Mycroft’s face even as Sherlock tilts away from his brother, drawn (or drawing himself) to John instead.

“The problem is the same as it’s always been, I’m guessing,” John goes on, gaining confidence as they continue to listen. “You’re both just _terribly_ disappointed that you’re not the same. Aren’t you. That Sherlock hasn’t lived up to big brother’s expectations, hasn’t gotten out from under his shadow.” Sherlock looks hurt for a moment, but John doesn’t stop (it’ll all be worth it, my love, I promise). “He’s spent his entire life trying to be every bit as good as you at what you do and you’ve done nothing but encourage it, push him to shut himself off from—everything, just to refine his brain, his craft. Given him all the little hints and props and toys you could but above all, you wanted, you _needed_ it to be about the _work_ because what else _is_ there?”

Mycroft is facing him now, trying to stand tall, and John refuses to back down. Center of gravity, that’ll be the thing. Knock him down at the core.

“I’ve got some news for you, Mycroft. Sherlock has been beating himself down his entire life for not being your equal and it’s made him do some truly, fantastically stupid things, but he’s not a child anymore. He’s not _alone_ anymore. And if he doesn’t want to take down Moriarty by pretending that your bureaucracy has suddenly got its enormous head on straight instead of rammed up its own arse, then he _will_ figure out a better way.” A quick glance reveals Sherlock’s awe but also his uncertainty, and John smiles again for an utterly separate reason.

“And I’m going to do everything I possibly can to help him, because I _know_ he can do it. So if you can’t find it in yourself to trust him, or to trust us, then, if you would, get out of our home, and maybe don’t come back until you can.”

So how about _that._


	18. a world in which time makes up its mind as it goes along

Each of them wants very badly to break the silence, but at this, the worst possible moment, they seem to have forgotten how.

John sits in his soft red chair with his legs spread slightly and leans back, feeling quite justified in his actions. It crosses his mind that they’re all suffering in different patterns and to different degrees, and he shouldn’t have said what he did, but on the other hand, it was for the best and they all needed to hear it.

A bus rumbles past on the street below.

Sherlock stands about halfway between John and Mycroft, his thousand-yard stare fixed at a point on the wall slightly below eye level. His mind is surely racing at the speed of sound, possibly a little faster, and he seems to have paralyzed himself with the enormity of it as words stick in his throat or on the tip of his tongue.

An owl hoots without regard for the daylight hour.

Mycroft looks as surprised as John imagines he’s capable, as though the rug has been yanked out from under him and he hopes he recovered quickly enough that no one saw him stumble. The calculating narrowness of his eyes betrays the reeling inside his head, the surprise at this unanticipated yet overdue turn of events.

Something large and made of glass shatters on the pavement.

Tick, tick, tick.

Mycroft clears his throat, not terribly loudly, and knocks the ferrule of his umbrella against the floor.

“Apologies,” he says tersely, and John recognizes that tone, recognizes the difference between “I’m sorry I hurt you” and “I’m sorry I was caught.” Wonders how long it’s been since Mycroft was held accountable by anyone outside his own mind, how long it’s been since he had to do this anywhere but secretly, fixing everything as though nothing had gone wrong in the first place. Wonders how much he hates himself, how much that drives him.

John nods generously. Mycroft can take it as acceptance if he wishes; John hasn’t decided yet how much he means it to be.

After a pause to give the discord time to settle, Mycroft clears his throat again.

“The fact remains that if you two are to confront Moriarty in any capacity at all, you will need some sort of _plan._ ”

Yes, that.

John breathes out through his nose and frowns deeply, and Sherlock takes a single step backwards towards the fireplace.

“So we can’t try to buy his cooperation,” John lists as though the matter is settled, “apparently it’s my fault that we can’t try to trick him into thinking Sherlock will go with him because he wants to, and we’re not sending Sherlock in by himself. We’re not,” he repeats when Sherlock purses his lips and narrows his eyes. “And that’s a great start but now we need to figure out what we _are_ going to do.”

It’s a good effort, a strong showing, but, well.

It’s not much, is it.

Silence.

The wind picks up, more visible than audible, and John has the bizarre thought that it seems to be a fantastic speed for sailing. His chair trembles under him, three quick shakes; maybe it’s too strong, it’s hard to be sure from here.

He wishes Moriarty was dead.

No, maybe not.

He wants him to suffer.

Sherlock takes a rattling breath and squares his shoulders, unbuttons his left cuff and buttons it again.

“We’ve no other choice.”

John waits patiently for the details to become clear, but Mycroft already understands, closing his eyes as though reality pains him too much to encounter. “Sherlock, as I told you before…”

“I don’t mean _that._ ”

Aha. But if Sherlock didn’t have it in mind to persuade Mycroft to let them kill Moriarty, then what? Surely they wouldn’t propose to send _John_ in alone, which would accomplish nothing, so…

Oh; well then. It may be a lion’s den, but at least they’ll be walking in together.

The silence is different this time, but not any easier. Sherlock’s chest is raised, his back slightly arched and the posture altogether heavy-handed, overkill, _too much_ (he’s not fooling anyone but it never hurts to try); Mycroft tries to project the sort of confident arrogance born of being in control of a volatile situation, but they all know that he isn’t (to be fair, though, neither is anyone else); John fights to keep from falling out of his chair, out of his home, out of his country, stumbling back into Afghanistan, into the war zone, into the blood and muck and mire because this is different, different, different, and there was that one time, remember how it was, when they buried Paul on a cloudy day in a steel coffin six feet down (everything’ll be okay in the end).

Mycroft makes a soft humming noise that sounds like the prelude to a closing speech. Sherlock puts his hands in his pockets and John waits.

Silence.

( _What have you done._ )

After a moment, John sways to his feet on a rocking motion, swinging his arms back and forward for balance.

“Do we have any idea of the timing of all this, uh.” He thins his lips and the skin around his eyes tightens. “Business?”

“Immediate,” Sherlock says, not to anyone in particular, and Mycroft shakes his head.

“We’ll certainly require a plan, Sherlock, this is not one of—”

However he intended to end that, he decides at the last moment not to, and John imagines that’s a good idea. ( _I hereby invoke my privilege against self-incrimination._ ) Mycroft sighs, sounding like it takes a lot of effort.

“It is my understanding that none of us has had reason to formulate a plan trending toward…this particular _direction,_ ” he tries again, “and as such I should think we would all benefit from a bit of foresight.”

It’s a great idea, in theory.

In practice, it’s building a castle in the clouds. No foundation.

John shuffles his feet.

This is ridiculous.

“Do we even have a way to get in contact with him?” he asks pointedly, hoping the interjection sounds as authoritative as he means instead of desperate as he feels. “Other than ‘catch you later,’ he didn’t give you any, secret hints or anything?”

Sherlock flinches minutely (that answers that) but Mycroft scoffs, actually scoffs, as though this is anything to be mocked or taken lightly.

“That won’t be a concern.”

“You mean your task force has it handled?”

It’s spiteful and it sounds petty, and John only wishes he’d been wittier. Mycroft’s fingers curve into claws and then relax on his umbrella handle, his jaw tensing as he grounds himself.

“The necessary information can be acquired.”

Of course it can.

_We’re on the same side here._

Right, right. Deep breath.

“So,” John starts over. “We’ll find him. Then what?”

What are we going to say?

How are we going to stop him?

Can we beat him with a baseball bat?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

“We’re thinking about this all wrong,” Sherlock says coldly, perking John’s attention and prompting Mycroft’s obvious disdain. “We don’t have anything to offer so we need to come at it from the other side, we need to figure out what we can put ourselves in a position to _get_ from him, not what we can give him to persuade him to meet our demands but what he has that _we_ want.”

“Cooperation,” Mycroft says patiently, but Sherlock shakes his head and glares.

“He would never, we’ve certainly established that. But why can’t we kill him?” he challenges. “Because he _knows_ something, most likely a great many things, which may spell out danger for people you cannot afford to _be_ in danger.”

“You’ve just said he won’t cooperate,” John says cautiously, and Sherlock shakes his head again with much less ire.

“Not willingly, no.”

Oh, they’ve gone too far this time.

Is this logical? Is this _possible?_ Is this potentially the wildest, weirdest, stupidest plan they could have ventured into? Does Sherlock think for some reason that this is going to _work?_

Well…to be fair, John did say he would support Sherlock in whatever plan he invented, and it’s not as though there are any competing ideas in play.

“Let me clarify,” Mycroft says as he raises his chin and holds his umbrella primly in front of him, “that after your frankly disastrous personal encounter with Moriarty, all the research you have done into previous cases in which he was involved, your knowledge of his methods and his utter disregard for human life, and whatever history he believes may lie between you…you intend to try to _trick_ him?”

When you put it that way.

John’s faith only wavers for a moment. Sherlock knows something, definitely. He must. Surely.

“Please, brother mine, an alternative, if you would.”

Mycroft’s lips pinch and he closes his eyes gently, a strained combination of reproach and submission. It’s obvious Sherlock’s won.

“In addition to the timing and location of this eventual meeting, I’ll need all the information your team has available on Moriarty’s behavior in the past,” Sherlock says briskly, “particularly regarding any encounters with authority figures, in law enforcement or otherwise.”

Mycroft takes out his mobile, then seems to think better of it; he makes a point to incline his head in John’s direction and makes his way deliberately to the door.

“You’ll have the necessary details shortly,” he informs Sherlock. This is a professional transaction now, no time to be concerned with things like fear and uncertainty (that’ll come later), and Sherlock’s grin is unduly confident.

“See that I do.”

Narrowing his eyes and smiling thinly, Mycroft closes the door behind himself and doesn’t look back. The instant the door clicks shut, John collapses into his chair.

“Sherlock.”

“Mm?”

John chews on his lip; no, he has to ask.

“You’re not serious. About this plan.”

Immediately, Sherlock’s brow knits, his lips parting slightly, but approximately one second later, the expression transforms into one of pride and affection. John is still tense, though he’s no longer entirely sure why.

“Well spotted, John.”

His relieved sigh is only partially accurate, but he’s not about to tell Sherlock that.

“So what _are_ you going to do?”

Sherlock grins.

“No idea.”

Yes, because that’s comforting.

\---

While they wait for Mycroft’s courier (or Anthea, possibly, although John senses that she would never stand for such a title), needing to keep up the ruse and not having much else to do in the meantime without the date and time of the meetup, Sherlock opens John’s laptop on the table by the windows and begins an inconsistent pattern of clicking and scrolling as he reads a long article, or series of articles, dotted with archaic-looking diagrams and sketches. John watches him for awhile, trying to catalogue his slightly varied expressions, but it doesn’t occupy him well enough to chase the trepidation completely from his head, the tension from his chest. He tries imagining shooting Moriarty with his old service revolver, right between the eyes, but the satisfaction is fleeting; instead he imagines what Moriarty would have been like on the battlefield with him, but if Moriarty isn’t dead then he can only be envisioned to be the sole survivor of a massacre, and the idea makes his stomach turn.

He listens for the doorbell, or footsteps on the stairs, and hears nothing.

Sherlock folds his hands in front of his face and rests his nose on them; John recognizes the distress behind his vacant eyes and thinks about pretending to be unafraid.

There’s no point to it, really.

“Sherlock.”

The answering hum is quiet and drawn out, and John knows he doesn’t have all of Sherlock’s attention. It’s fine, though; he doesn’t need it right now.

“Sherlock, does Mycroft know what you’re doing?”

A long pause, but Sherlock must have heard. Does he know? He must know. ( _Information relevant to anything that’s worth knowing._ )

Closing his eyes for a moment, he moves his chin to his hands and sniffs.

“In a way.”

John arches his eyebrows, unable to decide whether to lean forward or back and settling for sideways.

“What way?”

Sherlock’s lips twist in a wry smile.

“He knows, and elects not to believe.”

Fantastic.

“Plausible deniability.”

Shrugging, Sherlock blinks the haze from his eyes and closes the laptop. “One of the greater necessities of a lifetime in politics, I’m given to understand. I believe Mycroft had it rather forcefully beaten into him at an early stage in his career.”

“Not literally, though.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that for sure.”

For the moment, John finds that he doesn’t much mind either way.

“So this is just more of the same, then,” he says, trying to find it in himself to be disappointed and coming up instead with resentment. “Manipulating the situation the get what he wants, forcing you to do the legwork that’ll clean up his mess. Throw yourself to the dogs for him, is that it?”

Sherlock sighs, a weary-sounding thing.

“He’s trying.”

(Don’t you love farce?)

\---

As it happens, Anthea is the one to deliver the files, but she’s on her way out the door before Sherlock has quite taken them completely out of her hand and she never looks up from her BlackBerry even once. Sherlock doesn’t bother to thank her, and though John wants to, he isn’t sure what words to use and doesn’t think she’d want to hear them. It’s fine. Frivolous niceties, they have no use for such wastes of time.

Sherlock brings the files to the sofa and sits, opening the topmost folder and immediately tossing pages aside. They flutter to the cushions and the floor, a few landing on the coffee table, and John folds his arms over his chest and waits.

Naturally, it’s the last page in the stack that holds anything of interest.

“Sunday,” Sherlock complains, tossing the folder with the sheet in it into the air and leaning forward over his folded arms. “According to Mycroft’s ‘experts,’ Moriarty will be at Bristol South Swimming Pool at approximately 4:30. ‘For reasons unspecified.’”

John’s lips quirk in the confused beginnings of a smile. “‘Reasons unspecified’?”

“They’ve no idea.”

Figures.

“No one around to ask, I suppose.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “He doesn’t have a _team,_ ” he sneers, “doesn’t keep a shortlist of sycophants on hand. Too many potential unknowns, too much risk and not enough reward.”

“Right, right…”

As John goes to sit in his chair, something occurs to him. It’s improbable, of course, very much so, but is it absolutely impossible?

“Sherlock,” he ventures, “you said the administration would never stand for Moriarty being matched with his soulmate.”

“Quite rightly.”

“Yeah.” Putting that aside for the moment. “Well, it’s not as though you and I had any governmental assistance.”

Sherlock eyes him critically, not as disbelieving as John expected. “You think he’s found his soulmate?”

“I’m just wondering if it’s possible.”

Judging by his blank expression, it’s not something Sherlock has considered yet; John’s a bit pleased (even though that might mean it’s just a worthless distraction). Slowly, somewhat stiffly, Sherlock reaches down for some of the discarded papers, stacking them in a messy pile on top of the closed folders. He doesn’t seem to be looking at them.

“John,” Sherlock says tentatively. John hums, but it’s not necessary as he goes on: “You were forced to register your blood with the DOH when you joined the army.”

“And again when I joined the clinic,” John says, not understanding why it suddenly matters but Sherlock is growing excited so it must be important.

“Both positions in government agencies.” He grins, and John nods as he begins to understand.

“Moriarty was incarcerated before he was put on Mycroft’s special list.”

“Government runs the prison system.”

Sherlock’s eagerness is infectious, even though this idea is at least as crazy as everything else they’ve done today. Of course, now they’ve gone this far, why not go a little further?

“You can still access the DOH records.”

Sherlock shrugs childishly. “Molly hasn’t changed her password in years.”

There isn’t really a good response to that. On the one hand, it makes all the sense in the world; Greg doesn’t have a password to the DOH for Sherlock to steal and Mycroft’s connections are certainly secure, so of course he would take Molly’s. On the other, another example of Sherlock abusing Molly’s position at the hospital and access to government files is an astounding abuse of her trust and frankly a pretty underhanded move. To be fair, though, he’s using the information for good reasons; excellent reasons, really. (Consequentialism, have you sunk so low?)

“You’re such a cock.” (He says it with a smile.)

“Aren’t you even a bit curious?” Sherlock wheedles unnecessarily, and John ducks his head and chuckles.

“Your brother had better see to it that Doctor Hooper gets a raise after all this.”

Sherlock smiles reflexively, but he already has the laptop open, typing his way into the DOH.

“Jim or James Moriarty,” he announces as his fingers dance over the keys. “All bloodwork pertaining to.”

“Wait,” John says suddenly; Sherlock doesn’t stop, not that John expected him to, but he goes on nonetheless: “We’re assuming that Moriarty was the one who changed his victims’ records, yeah, or he bribed or threatened some government official to do it? Why, why wouldn’t he have gotten rid of his own?”

As his eyes dart across the screen, Sherlock studiously ignores the question; John has trouble believing it’s because he doesn’t have any ideas. Too many, maybe.

“James Moriarty,” he says instead. “Blood systematized 6 January, 1996, after his arrest for attempted murder of one Sebastian Moran.”

John thinks about pressing the issue, but that would surely end poorly. Instead he frowns, resting his cheek on his fist. “Who’s that?”

Sherlock types a few more lines and continues reading.

“Second Lieutenant, deceased,” he murmurs. “Blood systematized upon enlistment, records sealed prior to his death on 6 January, 1996.”

“What happened to ‘attempted murder’?” John muses, and this time Sherlock looks over, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

“We have to assume that everything Moriarty has done, or left undone, is part of the game,” he says. “This is the first clue, left out for anyone who thinks to look.”

The first clue.

( _What do you lust after?_ )

The starting point, the origin of things.

John takes a shuddering breath. It’s both stunning and unsurprising, hideous and inevitable, but most importantly, it fits perfectly into place.

“They were soulmates.”

It's quite unfair for reasons he can’t put into words.


	19. a world of fixed future

Sherlock invites John to sleep in his bed Tuesday night and doesn’t join him until nearly dawn.

For largely unrelated reasons, Wednesday is one of the worst days of John’s life.

When he wakes, Sherlock lies still beside him and it feels later than he’d like, but he doesn’t want to check the clock. There’s no point to it; nowhere he needs to be, nothing he needs to do. No one he needs to meet. (For about a second, he wonders how the clinic is getting on without him; on the other hand, fuck ‘em, they can make do.) The usual elements of a morning routine pass through a blurred lens; meeting his own gaze in the mirror, he washes his face, and then as he pulls on his jeans and socks, wonders if he brushed his teeth this morning or if the memory is one from yesterday or the day before. His teeth taste like mint but he sloshes a mouthful of Sherlock’s Listerine around for 30 seconds anyway.

What to do, what to do. Going to the living room and sitting at the table by the window, he opens his laptop and surfs the Internet to some muscle-memory familiar medical blog, boring himself by reading the articles in reverse chronological order.

Sherlock emerges from the bedroom shortly after, still in his pyjamas with a merlot-colored dressing gown draped over them and his feet bare; he goes to the window at John’s back and doesn’t speak. John wonders if he’s exhausted, if John woke him somehow by accident; he wants to ask Sherlock roughly nine thousand questions, most of them unimportant and, by turns, nonsensical, but all of them seeming in the moment terribly, terribly relevant. He settles instead for silence, forcing himself to read another article and thinking up snide annotations when the author tries to hide the flaws in the research methodology by ignoring them entirely.

The reality of their plan, as it were, has settled around them in an abstract form, a vaguely knowable thing on the horizon with hazy edges and details shrouded in heavy fog. It’s unavoidable but unclear, lurking and disconcerting. Now and again, John finds himself reading passages of the blog text without comprehension as James Moriarty’s face or Sebastian Moran’s name creep into his brain, both accompanied by weighty but nonspecific threats, drilling _danger danger danger_ into his bones with no hope of relief.

Just before the blog runs out of articles, Sherlock picks up his violin and rests it on his shoulder; the noise he summons is ghastly, the hideous screech to be expected of a furious novice fed up with his simplistic lessons, and it continues much longer than should be acceptable. John doesn’t voice his protest, but after awhile he puts his fingers in his ears.

Later there’s a thunderstorm, and Sherlock stops playing (if you want to call it that) because the moisture is terrible for his violin, and anyway, he needs to shut the windows, which John has always found to be a secondary concern. As Sherlock draws the curtains, John closes that stupid medical blog and goes instead to Google Maps; the first recommended route from 221B Baker Street to Bristol South Swimming Pool is two and a quarter hours by car, the second nearly three hours by train. He doesn’t know why he looked it up, he doesn’t want the information. They’re not going to go.

(That’s adorable, tell me more.)

Thunder claps and rumbles overhead and John stands to kick a chair across the floor.

Sherlock waits for him to sit down again, and then another stolid minute, before he picks the chair up and puts it back. John stares at the tabletop and nods at nothing in particular.

As the daylight behind the clouds begins to fade, John wonders if he ate yesterday. Might’ve done, some kind of dinner thing, probably takeaway; he doesn’t remember. Doesn’t care. He should have something now, though, is there food in the refrigerator? Body parts? Chemical samples? No? It’s alright, he isn’t sure he’d be able to keep anything down.

His mobile rings piercingly, the generic tune he’s always shared with about a million other lazy people, and he answers and immediately ends the call with two sharp taps of his thumb. The screen briefly announces Sarah Sawyer’s name, which is odd not so much because they haven’t spoken since she left as because he doesn’t remember ever exchanging numbers with her, doesn’t know why he would’ve done.

_Ping._

Hope you’re doing  
well!  
<3 Sarah

It sounds passive aggressive even though she almost definitely didn’t intend it that way, and as he turns the phone off, he wonders if she’s having some kind of midlife crisis.

Sherlock walks past and lays his hand on the back of John’s neck for a moment, a tender gesture John has been trained over the years to associate with affection and control. He isn’t sure if Sherlock means either; he pauses his stride only briefly and doesn’t look at John as he does, merely rubbing his thumb up against John’s hairline and then veering off toward the kitchen. John places his own hand on the back of his neck and squeezes, feeling an ache around his carotid artery, and wonders what that was all about.

The rain starts up again, dark clouds covering the dark sky, and good lord, it’s still only Wednesday.

Maybe he’ll sleep through the rest of the month.

\---

Thursday, he’s permitted by some synaptic malfunction to pretend for awhile that Sundays are a fiction invented by the media to falsely inflate or sabotage their own Nielsen ratings, most likely in collusion with the government to solicit citizens to deposit their blood in the DOH registry _en masse_ (who said anything about groupthink, how absurd). He doesn’t mention it to Sherlock because it’s so obviously false, but indulging in willful ignorance for a little while isn’t the worst defense in the world. The morning on the whole is an ugly puddle of standing water, a dank scene carefully viewed through the wrong lens as he pretends three days is a long time.

After lunch, tea and a sandwich he makes a point of eating because he’s a health professional and should treat himself better, the synaptic malfunction sorts itself out and John is so overcome by hatred that he has to go for a walk through Regent’s Park, round in circles to the point of frightening a pair of young women trying to have a picnic at the edge of the cricket pitches. Anyway, it makes him sick to his stomach to be away from Sherlock right now, so he goes back to Baker Street, sits in his chair, and pretends to read the newspaper.

Sherlock stands in the kitchen, pouring beakers of clear liquids into other beakers of clear liquids and filling the air with smokes of different densities. Occasionally something makes a sizzling noise despite the lack of a heat source, and there’s one explosion that makes him curse abruptly, after which point he takes all of his equipment to the sink and washes it repeatedly, pouring the clear liquids down the drain.

Before he goes to bed that night, John stops Sherlock where he’s pacing the living room floor, twists his fingers in the lapels of Sherlock’s tartan dressing gown, and yanks him down into a deep and bruising kiss as Sherlock inhales sharply and grips John’s shoulder. They don’t say a word about it, but Sherlock climbs in under the covers as John begins to drift off to sleep and it feels like they understand each other.

\---

Friday, Lestrade texts Sherlock to announce that he’s stopping by for a visit without giving him the option to refuse. Sherlock tosses his phone into the air and catches it a few times before slipping it into the pocket of his dressing gown (blue silk) and putting the kettle on.

John takes one look at the kettle and goes to the cabinets to fetch the tea set.

“What does he want to talk about?” he asks without preamble. Sherlock shakes his head.

“He didn’t say. The case, I’m sure, but what new insights he’s come to…I can’t be certain.”

“Hm.”

John arranges the tea set on a circular tin tray and waits for the water to boil.

Greg does them the service of rapping his knuckles against the door before he opens it. Leaning back to peer into the entryway, John smiles in a welcoming sort of way, and Greg nods as he rethinks whatever speech he presumably had in his head, or forgets it. He stands uncomfortably by the coffee table, looking at the fireplace and then at Sherlock in the kitchen.

_Click._

Sherlock pours water into the teapot and brings the tray over to the little table beside John’s chair.

“Gavin,” he says jovially, and John smirks at the obviousness of the charade. Greg rolls his eyes and takes off his scarf.

“Sherlock, what’re you doing this weekend?”

“That’s awfully forward, Detective Inspector, and I shall inform my brother at once of your indiscretion.”

Greg lowers his brow, utterly unamused. “Sherlock.”

Sitting in his chair, Sherlock drops his hands heavily on the armrests, pretense fading. “What has Mycroft told you?”

Greg takes a step toward John’s chair and immediately thinks better of it, instead backtracking to the sofa. “Well he told me you were following up on an out-of-town lead, and I asked him why you hadn’t told me if you had new information about the case, and he said…” Greg trails off and shakes his head. “That’s not important. I know that whatever you’re doing has something to do with Dixon, probably with her killer, and if you’ve got a lead, one that’s big enough to take you on some kind of road trip, I— Sherlock.” He leans forward, resting his arms on his knees and looking more fatigued than John would expect (though he has every right).

“You’ve gotta tell me who this guy is.”

What a thing to happen.

John goes to his chair and watches for Sherlock’s reaction, but he’s doing a fine job of controlling himself, staring Greg down evenly. His mind is surely racing, as it always is, but the erratic twitching of his fingers hints at a more irregular disquiet (something in the heart, perhaps).

Fortunately Greg knows enough not to press any further.

Sherlock shakes his head.

“I don’t.”

“Sherlock.”

Greg’s manner aims for beseeching, but Sherlock’s glare is whetted and implacable.

“You don’t understand what you’re asking.”

To John’s ear, the statement is designed to backfire, and he wonders (as he’s done so many times already) the sorts of mind games Sherlock has spent his life perfecting by necessity, how quickly he was thrown into that deep end and how many times he nearly drowned before teaching himself to float.

Greg exhales loudly.

“If you won’t tell me, you know I have to take this to Mycroft.”

Time holds its breath as they sit motionless, unstrung, waiting. Then Sherlock sighs and the spell is shattered.

“I think that would be for the best.”

Clenching his hands into fists over the cushions at his sides, Greg looks incredulously at Sherlock, whose gaze is downcast, and then at John, who can’t bring himself to show anything but sympathy that Greg doesn’t understand (but he will, he will). When he stands, his shoulders slump in the weary sort of way they ought to do at the end of a long day rather than the beginning.

“Thanks, Sherlock,” he says without the bitterness he deserves. “I… I’ll be in touch.”

After a measured beat, he sees himself out, closing the door with extra care.

Sherlock waits a little while longer before taking the tea tray back into the kitchen and dumping the entire pot into the sink. He rinses the unused cups and dries them with a dishcloth, and John comes to stand beside him, leaning against the counter.

“Need any help?”

Sherlock laughs under his breath and doesn’t respond.

John puts the tea set away on the highest shelf he can reach.

\---

Saturday morning, Sherlock is still in bed when Mrs. Hudson taps gently on the door and pushes it open.

“Woo-hoo,” she chirps, taking a step in and leaning sideways to look toward John, seated in his chair. “I saw Mr. Lestrade looking rather out of sorts when he left here yesterday, I hope the two of you haven’t gotten yourselves into some kind of trouble. Now where is Sherlock, still in bed, I guess.”

John looks over his shoulder before setting the newspaper aside and going to greet her properly. It’s kind of her to visit, kind of her to ask after them, even though he can’t exactly explain the situation.

“Far as I know,” he agrees, trying to smile and feeling more of a grimace. “Er, thanks for stopping by.”

She smiles tenderly, patting his shoulder and searching his face.

“You’re quite welcome.”

He wonders what she wants to ask him, how he knows she won’t.

She pats his shoulder again and takes a small step back out into the hall, looking about to say something else. She doesn’t, and he closes the door behind her.

Sherlock appears suddenly, stepping over the coffee table and spinning on his heel to collapse onto the sofa. John looks between Sherlock and the hall leading down to his bedroom.

“Alright then.”

“Good morning, John.” He waves indifferently toward the door. “Mrs. Hudson dropped by?”

John nods slowly and Sherlock grins. It’s one of the most disconcerting things John has ever seen. Sniffing sharply, he walks back to his chair and sits, staring at the floor.

“Sherlock.”

“Mm.”

He needs something to do with his hands; though he isn’t hungry, exactly, he stands and goes to the kitchen to fetch an apple. It’s crisp and cold with a nice healthy shine and it feels like a stone in his grip.

He isn’t entirely sure what he wants to say.

Take heart, sir.

“What sort of person do you think Sebastian Moran was?”

Sherlock leans back into the cushions and stares up at the ceiling, and John tries to decide what his own answer to the question might be. Were Moran and Moriarty even compatible? Technically, biologically, sure. Personally? Was Moran a poor, desperate kid, maybe not too different from John himself, strategically joining the army for lack of better options and just trying to get by? Would he have fallen for Moriarty because he was lost, needy, vulnerable, because Moriarty was strong and able and had answers to important questions? Or maybe the murder was premature, and Moran would have agreed with Moriarty’s radical plan or even helped him carry it out. Had Moriarty done a favor for the rest of the world by striking out alone? Does anyone know, is anyone left who might have any idea?

Guess it’s just one of those things.

John turns his head to look at Sherlock, whose eyes are closed.

“Psychopath,” he says, and John smiles a little.

“Yeah?”

“No idea.”

John laughs quietly.

“Thanks.”

Sherlock grins.

It occurs to John that this isn’t the moment for levity, that they should be taking things seriously, making plans. Speaking in more than vague generalities and pointless conjectures. They should map out what they know about Moriarty and try to predict his next move (even though it would definitely be in vain).

The thing is, though, he really doesn’t want to.

Tick, tick, tick.

Gotta say something.

“Why the pool?”

The last traces of Sherlock’s grin fade and he tips his head down, chin to chest. John recognizes part of that expression, the straight line of his lips and the little lines at the corners of his eyes; doubt, self-contempt. _Fuck._ Why can’t anything be simple anymore? What happened to those days? (When was that again?)

“Something happened there,” Sherlock says dully. “Mycroft’s team only know Moriarty’s going to be there because he told them, somehow or other. He let them know, let it slip on purpose because he knew they wouldn’t understand the importance. Most likely it’s supposed to mean something to me.”

John huffs a short breath. “Could it have something to do with Moran?”

“No.” Instantaneous, that’s good. He’s not lost, not wandering in the pitch black. “It’s possible—probable that Moriarty knows we’ve discovered the connection between the two of them,” Sherlock explains. “The likelihood of anyone accessing Moran’s file at this point in time is extremely low, he’s not a person of particular interest in perpetuity, and we already know Moriarty has access to the DOH database; he’s likely keeping track of at least parts of it, and if he sees that Moran’s file has been opened recently, he’ll know it must have been us, what we must have deduced. But, remember, he sent out the signals of his location well before that happened.”

“You don’t think he was counting on you figuring it out?”

“Even if he was, there’s no record of Moran ever having visited the pool, and even if he did, it’s extremely unlikely that it would have any meaning to Moriarty; according to the official report, Moran was killed at his post, where he was found by his commanding officer, and that’s likely the only time he and Moriarty ever interacted.” Sherlock shrugs a little. “Actually I’m not convinced it’s important, that it’s not some ridiculous joke or distraction.”

_False._

John knocks his closed fist against his thigh a few times and looks out the window.

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever been there.”

_Please say yes._

He doesn’t even know why, just that something, _something_ about this needs to make sense because they may be going in blind but surely there must be _something._

Sherlock shakes his head and looks for just a moment like he would rather be dead.

“I don’t know.”

Well.

In the grand scheme of things, it could’ve been worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Groupthink: The desire to conform to or maintain harmony within a group causing individuals to act in a bizarre or irrational manner (Irving L. Janis, 1972).


	20. a world in which time flows backward

221B Baker Street has more than adequate heating, and there’s a heavy blanket on Sherlock’s bed, and the windows are shut, just to be safe.

John lies on his back in the dark and feels so cold it’s almost like burning.

Is he sick? No; no feverish flush, no aching muscles, no congestion in the chest or nasal cavities. Running through the list of potential symptoms, he knows it to be a fool’s errand, knows exactly what this is about and why. Don’t be stupid, don’t be blind.

Sherlock is curled up tight beside him, snug in the sheets and looking rather like some sort of bewigged pill bug. Closing his eyes tight, John feels his stomach roil and acid burn in his throat at the thought of What Might Happen (the surest way to get yourself killed).

_Waiting is the hardest part._

In his head, the words sound in a voice he doesn’t know to a tune he doesn’t recognize, a song he might’ve heard once a million years ago in some unfamiliar context, and he replays them over, and over, and over again until the track begins to skip. In an effort to clear out the broken record, he recites the Hippocratic Oath (his own voice this time) twice and then opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling.

The sheets rustle as Sherlock unfurls himself, moving in spasms and twitches until he’s facing John and his chest is no longer covered. Another moment and his arm lashes out, landing across John’s shoulders before he settles into stillness.

Gradually, gradually, the frigid cold recedes to a faint chill. John puts his hand over Sherlock’s wrist and closes his eyes

It’ll be morning soon enough.

And then.

\---

They wake late, probably, judging by the light coming in through the window; Sherlock’s chiming mobile is the thing that does it, a text message. Sherlock raises himself up on one forearm to grab the phone off his bedside table, reading the message quickly and handing it to John before dropping back down to the mattress.

Two messages. First:

You bastard.

Eight minutes later (oh wow, it’s already 9:52), the one that woke them both:

Good luck.

John chuckles and hands the phone back. Thanks for that, Greg, and welcome to the club.

“Want some breakfast?” he asks indifferently. Sherlock smiles.

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

He doesn’t move, but neither does John. After a minute or so, John laughs again, trailing off on a grin.

“We have to get up.”

They don’t. Sherlock puts the phone back on his bedside table and takes John’s hand.

“John.”

“Mm?”

The answer doesn’t come at once, but John is content to wait. Sherlock doesn’t look at him, or at least not at his face, but they don’t really need to see each other to communicate.

At least, he thinks they don’t. But then Sherlock squeezes his hand and releases it and gets out of bed and he wishes they were a little better at talking.

Sherlock goes to his wardrobe and stares into it for longer than a man should whose shirts are all basically variants on a single theme. Eventually he reaches in and comes up with pale grey with black buttons, and black trousers; nothing surprising, utterly flattering. He shrugs on a jacket to match the trousers and when he fastens it, it looks like armor, which makes John feel a little better. John gets out of bed then and takes time to grip Sherlock’s shoulder, sliding his hand down his bicep before he goes to fetch jeans and maybe a jumper from his room upstairs.

They don’t eat, either of them, and the kettle has water in it but neither of them turns it on.

“You should call him,” John says as they sit in their chairs in front of the fireplace and pretend they’re doing something necessary.

“I prefer to text,” Sherlock replies without thinking, and John smirks.

“Text him,” he amends. “He might come over otherwise.”

( _And this is private._ )

“He won’t,” Sherlock says. It’s true, John knows it just as well, and if Sherlock doesn’t want to respond to Greg’s well-wishes, there’s no point in forcing him.

John drums his fingers against the armrests of his chair, then his fists against his thighs. “So,” he says, pitched a little too high. “Should we go?”

Sherlock frowns, and John tries to keep still, not entirely sure what he’s looking for but hoping he finds it. He seems to, or at least close enough, because he stands and walks to the door, trusting John to follow.

“Pool’s open today until 15:45,” John points out, closing the door behind them and following Sherlock down the stairs. “We’ll be there in about two and a half hours.”

“Good.” Sherlock grabs his overcoat from the closet by the front door, tossing John his Haversack with the other hand. “No time for him to arrange any surprises.”

No surprises.

(If only we believed it.)

Sherlock waits with his hand on the knob, and John takes a breath to center himself. Right outside is a black saloon that Sherlock scoffs at, but when the driver gets out and hands him the keys, he doesn’t shy away, and then they’re on the road and on their way to Bristol and get ready, get set.

_Into battle._

\---

The ride takes exactly two and a quarter hours, thanks to sparse but nevertheless present traffic leading out of the city. Hardly a word is exchanged; John gets a close enough look at Sherlock’s shirt to see that it’s not actually a solid grey but dark pinpricks in a herringbone pattern, but he doesn’t know what to do with the information now that he has it. He looks out the window and Sherlock sighs.

Two and a quarter hours pass in alternating jumps and drags and then the car is parked across the street from the pool building, and they stay in their seats.

“You know,” John says, not sure if he’s addressing Sherlock or himself, “I’ve never been to Bristol.”

Sherlock hums as if he’s not sure either. “They have a lovely suspension bridge,” he remarks. John would laugh at a character delivering that line in a film, he thinks, but in real life it just fills in the silence.

“It’s 12:45,” he says needlessly, and Sherlock hums again.

Silence.

Then Sherlock’s palms slam against the steering wheel and the noise he makes is guttural and agonizing, and “Why can’t I _remember?_ ”

Unbuckling his seat belt, John turns as far as he can and grabs Sherlock’s shoulder, aiming more for his attention; he looks over in reflex, his eyes wild and his lips just barely parted. John frowns, bracing himself, and tightens his grip.

“Stop it.”

Sherlock takes a second to decide how to respond to that and seems to settle on contempt, which John ignores with everything he has in him.

“You know why you don’t remember?”

Now Sherlock is baffled, maybe alarmed, turning to mirror John’s posture, though he doesn’t reach for him. “You can’t possibly think that I do,” he accuses, but John shakes his head.

“You know why you don’t remember, Sherlock,” he refutes, “and it’s because you’re not perfect. But here’s the thing: You don’t need to be. Because you are _human._ You’re not prophetic, you’re not omnipotent, you couldn’t have known that this—meeting him, whenever that happened, or coming here, if it ever did, you couldn’t have known it was going to matter and so you made a _choice_ to forget because at the time, it was the right thing to do. Because you were just a kid, I bet, and you were still learning how to be _you,_ whatever that meant back then, and he wasn’t important, this place wasn’t important, you didn’t need it lurking in your brain, taking up space.”

Sherlock shakes his head, dropping chin to chest and running his hand through his hair. Laying his fingers along Sherlock’s jaw, John tips his face back up and looks intently into his desperate eyes.

“So stop it.”

Sherlock looks down again, but it doesn’t feel as distraught, so John lets it slide, rubbing his thumb across Sherlock’s cheekbone.

“Besides,” he goes on more flippantly as he releases his hold, “he’s such an arrogant prick, Moriarty’ll probably tell us exactly why he insisted we drive all the way out here; on a Sunday, at that.”

It prompts the stifled chuckle he was hoping for, so John allows himself a grin.

“You wanna go inside?”

Sherlock frowns, shedding his uncertainty and squaring his shoulders. “I doubt the proprietors would appreciate two unaccompanied men loitering around the edges of the pool during Family Fun Swim.”

“Fair enough.”

They sit in silence for awhile until John clears his throat and rests his arm on the windowsill.

“Sherlock.”

“Mm.”

“How are we going to stop him?”

Sherlock shakes his head.

Yeah. That’s about right.

\---

Around 16:00, a mass of patrons and staff file out of the pool facility; fifteen minutes later, a woman in a red jacket comes out and locks the doors behind her, hauling a duffel over her shoulder and walking off down the street. Sherlock waits for her to round a corner, then another thirty seconds before he opens his door and strides across the street like he owns it. John follows with just a touch less pride and approaches Sherlock as he’s finished picking the lock; Sherlock pushes the door open, might as well have had a key.

“Shall we?” he says formally, and John recognizes the attempt at levity. He inclines his head with a tight smile and walks inside, Sherlock on his heels.

The door closes behind them and they stand in the hall. John clears his throat.

“Through there, I think,” he says, nodding toward a set of pale blue double doors, the paint peeling around the chest-level spot most people would likely put their hands to push them open. Rather than answer in any way, Sherlock walks forward, a shade more tentative than he was a moment ago; John goes to his side and they pull the doors open like a pair of action movie protagonists, stepping onto the tile floor as their eyes adjust to the dim light. The filtration system keeps the water in the regulation-size pool from becoming stagnant, though it doesn’t make enough noise to be intrusive.

John thinks he hears Sherlock’s watch ticking. It’s possible, considering the vast hollowness of the room and the amplifying effect of the water. Or it might be his imagination.

It must be nearly time.

“John.”

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s lips twitch in the vague implication of a smile.

“Be careful.”

John shoves his hands into his coat pockets and sets his feet shoulder-width apart.

“You too.”

Sherlock takes uncertain steps forward, looking like he’s moving in slow motion, scanning the room to memorize the layout.

Then, out of the dark:

“Here we are at last.”

The door farthest from them, diagonally across the pool, opens a crack. John leaves his hands in his pockets but clenches them into fists.

“You and me, Sherlock.”

The door opens the rest of the way, slowly, and Moriarty walks out, each step equally measured and lethargic. Sherlock takes one step backwards towards John, then stops moving entirely; John merely watches.

“What do you want?” Sherlock snips as Moriarty draws nearer, smiling.

“You know what I want.”

Sherlock arches his eyebrow enquiringly; he may well, but he won’t risk giving the wrong answer. Interpreting it as a challenge, Moriarty looks at the ground, clasping his hands behind his back.

“I haven’t made myself clear enough for you yet?”

“Perfectly.”

Moriarty raises his eyes but keeps his face low, making him look somewhat deformed. “So?” he goads, but Sherlock shakes his head.

“You’re insane.”

Moriarty does raise his face then, blinking owlishly.

“You’re just getting that now?”

“Just making sure we understand one another.”

Moriarty laughs, walking to the edge of the water.

“How much more blood do you want on your hands, Sherlock? How many more innocent victims?” Sighing dramatically, he looks over his shoulder at Sherlock, then, surprisingly, at John. “And all because you still don’t _understand!_ ”

Just a bit, hardly noticeable, Sherlock bristles at Moriarty’s diverted attention.

“Do you know why I invited you here?” Moriarty asks. Sherlock sniffs imperiously, pretending not to have lost his composure.

“You’re looking to initiate a partnership.”

“ _Nooo,_ ” Moriarty whines, spinning on his heel and lurching towards Sherlock as his arms drop to his sides and his poise vanishes. “Why did I invite you _here._ ” Looking up from under his furrowed brow, Moriarty grins just enough to show the glint of his cuspid. “It’s been driving you mad, hasn’t it.”

“Don’t give yourself so much credit.”

“You don’t want me to tell you?”

“You would prefer I show you how damaging your arrogance has been?”

“You think you can?”

“Girls,” John cuts in, taking his hands out of his pockets and walking forward as Sherlock turns to him sharply. John returns his glare, hoping he’s reading this right. “You’re both very pretty. Now, you.” He turns to Moriarty. “What the hell’s so special about this place? You take your swimming lessons here back in primary school?”

The contempt in Moriarty’s eyes borders on lividity.

“Keep a leash on your pet, Sherlock,” he advises. “But you want to let him in on it? Should we do that, do you think it’s about time?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer; John can’t quite tell if it’s because he’s offended on his behalf or still trying to pretend he knows the answer to the question with any certainty. Quickly growing bored of waiting, Moriarty rolls his eyes and sighs.

“This is where Timothy Marr was drowned.”

Light refracts in the lapping pool water, catching glints off cufflinks (of course Moriarty is dressed to the nines) and watch faces (John needed the security, although he’s tempted to smash it against the wall because time has no meaning in this place), and the air has a toxic spice to it that’ll kill them if they stand for too long in one place. John watches the gears grind in Sherlock’s brain, hears the soles of his shoes thud against the ground as he runs up and down the halls of his mind palace, hunting for any mention, any newspaper clipping, any image, any hint of Timothy Marr even as he knows there will be nothing, deleted, vanished, never there.

Moriarty makes a derisive noise, a glottal scoff, and Sherlock blinks rapidly.

“ _Sherlock,_ ” Moriarty scolds teasingly. “Not _everything_ is about you.”

John inhale a sharp breath that burns his sinuses and takes just enough leading steps to land between them, trying to hold himself together.

“Who is he, then?” he asks, trying to keep his tone indifferent. This isn’t important information (it definitely hasn’t kept Sherlock up nights), it’s just an irritating puzzle they need to throw together before they can move on to the next stage. Don’t give yourself too much credit, you bastard. Moriarty levels Sherlock with a glare that says he doesn’t believe it for a second— _can’t believe you spend your time with_ that—but then he shrugs and smiles and _this is what I was waiting for._

“Doctor Watson,” he begins his tale, shuffling his heel against the floor. “When you worked at that government clinic, you remember, just awhile back; the youngest child you ever found a soulmate pair for, how old was he?”

John tries to remember; it seems so long ago now. He hopes he isn’t falling into a trap when he answers:

“12.”

Moriarty smiles privately and shakes his head as though it’s funny, as though anything about this is funny.

“Dear me, Doctor. _12._ Practically ancient.” He sighs emphatically and John’s stomach knots. “Little Timmy Marr was only nine when he found his life partner and he was sure to tell absolutely _everyone_ about it.”

Nine?

Clips, memories, moments fan through John’s mind until a vague idea, a common thread strengthens the link between them.

_Other children._

Good god. How long has Moriarty been planning this?

He senses more than sees the change in Sherlock as he understands the same, probably filling in many more gaps in the story than John has done but falling under the same vastness, tying down to the same end.

“Was he the first?” Sherlock asks coldly. No sense in pretense; they’re disgusted, as was surely his intent.

“That’s awfully lewd,” Moriarty mocks, the lilt of his tone giving away his amusement. “Yes Sherlock, of course he was the first. You think I would bring you anywhere other than the start of everything? For this momentous occasion?”

Momentous, ha. Today is handily the lowest point of John’s entire month. (Or at least a strong contender.)

“Jealous?” Sherlock taunts, but Moriarty only looks baffled by the accusation, even taking a quick step backwards.

“ _Jealous?_ ” His pursed lips stretch into a smile that crinkles the skin around his eyes. “What would I have to be jealous of? Sherlock. I saw an opportunity and I took it. Granted that drove of plebeians wasn’t the ideal audience to make my case, but one must make allowances, don’t you agree?” Not waiting for an answer, he waves off his own question. “You should have _seen_ him! He was so proud of himself, so glad for that…happy accident. So _complacent._ ”

The word rolls off his tongue like candy, tantalizing and full of promises. John doesn’t want to know what those promises are, wishes he didn’t already; instead he turns to the water, glimmering in the shadows, but all he can think of is the chlorine.

Sherlock scoffs. “No one cleverer than you.”

“If only, if only, if only the others understood as well as you. No,” Moriarty proclaims as he again clasps his hand behind his back, pacing lazily toward them. “No, he wasn’t cleverer than me. He wasn’t clever at all, in fact, he wasn’t anything he thought he was.”

“So you killed him.”

“Any decent revolutionary movement starts with a single well-placed argument.” Moriarty is level with Sherlock now, leaning up into his stoic face and making John’s blood boil. “Soulmates are a cheap commodity, Sherlock. Everybody has one. Little Timmy Marr was the one to open my eyes to that, and I should thank him for it. Greatness, though.” He shakes his head with a sardonic smile and sticks his hands in his pockets. “Greatness takes true genius, and that is something you have to _earn._ And no one was up to the task, Sherlock; well, _you_ know. You’re just as disappointed as I am.”

John grits his teeth. _You are nothing like him and don’t you dare think it for a second._

Sherlock remains impassive and Moriarty’s grin blossoms delightedly.

“And then, I found _you._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At Bristol South Swimming Pool, “Family Fun Swim” runs on Sundays from 13:30 until 14:45. As far as I can tell, this is a period designated by Everyone Active (Sports and Leisure Management [SLM Ltd.]) specifically to promote activity and fitness for families rather than individual members of the facility.


	21. a world in which time has three dimensions

Here we go.

For all the serenity inherent in any form of gently churning water, John knows the static in the air, knows this brand of tension, this moment of climax; this is the moment of _finally,_ the battle at the end of all the planning, the thing that should be the most chaotic and adrenaline-fueled instead bringing the greatest clarity, the greatest sense of placement in the world at large. This is the instant before the shatter, the trembling before the storm that is its own aftermath, the _what-are-we-doing, what-will-we-have-done._

Sherlock is, if anything, impatient to get it over with, which John both understands and doesn’t, and Moriarty’s face falls at the edges when they don’t cower at his glee.

“I thought not everything was about me,” Sherlock mocks then, to John’s unwitting amusement. Moriarty rolls his shoulders in a sort of shrug.

“Well, not _everything._ ” He pauses to consider. “But most things.”

Naturally.

He seems to be waiting for some response, expecting them to rise to the bait; his own eagerness, in the end, his pride is his undoing.

“Alright, alright, I’ll tell you,” he announces. “Stop throwing open all your mind palace doors, Sherlock, we’d never met before Rugeley, you and I. But I spent my youth just as you did, lost in a sea of imbecilic little goldfish, floating along like idiots; it wasn’t until you joined up with the good detectives of the Yard that, well. I couldn’t help it, could I?” With a dreamy sigh, he flutters his eyelids dramatically.

“God, Sherlock, you were so _good,_ so willing to look beyond the obvious; so able to use your _brain._ So wasted on all their run-of-the-mill murders, stupid little things you could solve from your sitting room chair. And you did it all for the game of it, didn’t you? Don’t lie to me,” he warns, as though Sherlock has spoken even a word of interruption, “I know it’s true. We’re just alike that way, you and I, doing it for the thrill of the chase, the blood pumping through your veins. You never _cared_ about the victims, never sought ‘justice,’” he actually quirks his fingers in the air, “you just wanted to get there first.

“But Sherlock, you were never going to get to me,” Moriarty drawls, smug and dismissive. _You’re good, I’m better._ “Bribery, extortion, idle threats,” he ticks off, “it was always so easy to keep you away, throw up just the right obstacles. Why bother getting caught before it was necessary, really necessary? It took me awhile to come up with the perfect test, but you have to admit, it was a good one.”

“Murders dressed up as suicides,” Sherlock acknowledges stiffly, and Moriarty smirks.

“I thought you’d like that. This here, though, this meeting, this is my favorite part; didn’t it drive you _crazy?_ ” he needles. John flexes his left hand in and out of a fist, stretching the tendons, and Sherlock’s eyes narrow when Moriarty raises his face so their noses are almost touching. “Didn’t it drive you _mad?_ The clue, the cue, turn on the lights, Sherlock, what is it, where is it, it must be somewhere, this place must be important because he’s so clever, I’m so clever, _just like you._ ” Stabbing his finger into Sherlock’s sternum, he allows for one more toothy grin before backing away a step. “But it doesn’t mean a thing; Timothy was stupid, bombastic, and I could’ve killed him anywhere, it wouldn’t have mattered. This place was convenient back then, the right place at the right time. Admit it, though; trying to figure it out, wasn’t it _fun?_ ”

Sherlock breathes out through his teeth and if anything Moriarty’s smile grows, sickening and dreadful as he inhales (John’s going to be ill).

“We’re a matched pair, you and I,” Sherlock murmurs. “Balancing out each other’s weaknesses, bolstering each other’s strengths. You’re just trying to correct nature’s mistakes.”

( _But he doesn’t believe,_ keep telling yourself.)

Moriarty’s eyes widen, his mouth turning down in a positively crestfallen picture that would be comical if it didn’t seem like he was finally starting to get to the point, to take this seriously.

“Nature’s mistakes,” he says lowly. “You mean because we aren’t soulmates? No.” He shakes his head, backs away. “No, we don’t need soulmates to be perfect, you and I; for god’s sake, you know what I did to mine, I know you do. That’s the beauty of all of this, wouldn’t you say?”

When he turns to them again, his hand is in his pocket and it makes John wary for reasons he doesn’t think are entirely logical.

“I put it to you, Sherlock,” Moriarty announces, “that everything you know, everything you have ever known, all of this is allegory. You and I would be much better off making our own way.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

John looks to Sherlock, sees the blink of fear in his eyes, just for an instant, and understands the same.

_This is it, boys._

“I won’t pay you,” Sherlock retorts, trying so hard to keep it casual. Moriarty isn’t buying it, knows this game too well.

“I wouldn’t ask you to.”

_Here we go._

Beretta 92FS, the barrel aimed right between John’s eyes. His lips pinch together; it doesn’t feel quite the same as the battlefield, simultaneously more and less intimate, more and less exhilarating. A pale imitation, a glossy fake. He doesn’t much care for it.

“I thought you didn’t like to get your hands dirty,” Sherlock says coolly.

“You just make me break all the rules, don’t you,” Moriarty ponders, jostling the pistol. “I could kill him right now, but then, you already knew that.”

Sherlock hums his assent. “And surely you already knew of this.”

Sig Sauer P226R, the gun Sherlock acquired from his brother and John hid at the back of the bookcase (not very well, he knew it even then). Of course Sherlock would have brought it, he’s not stupid. Though it may be intended to be calming, should perhaps be reassuring, it only makes John more tense, the situation more terrifying.

_Breaking the rules._

Aren’t they all.

“You can’t kill me,” Moriarty scoffs. “Don’t insult us both, Sherlock. You would’ve done it already if you were allowed.”

“You’re betting all this on the assumption that I’ll follow the rules set forth by my brother?” Sherlock taunts. “I’m not quite sure you’ve thought it through.”

“Your life would be over,” Moriarty murmurs with a sickly sort of delight. “No one on the planet will live long enough to clean up the mess you’d leave. You have no idea the minefield you’re walking into, Sherlock.”

The Beretta clicks as he flicks the safety off.

Sherlock’s eyes dart to John and Moriarty sighs heavily.

“Oh, Sherlock,” he simpers. “You had to go and ruin it all. Should’ve listened to big brother when he told you not to waste your time with _attachments._ ” He lowers his gun then, surreptitiously putting the safety back on. “I know _you_ would defy the order without a second thought, but what would it do to _John._ To have you on the run for the rest of your life, trying to pick up the pieces left behind. He’d be _devastated._ ”

John scowls, but of course Moriarty isn’t done:

“But I don’t much care about that side of things, to be honest.”

Sherlock’s gun is still pointed at Moriarty; at his heart, John sees now that he has a moment to look. It’s fitting, a sort of poetic justice, although a headshot would be a better bet. Piercing the bullet through his eye would have the same emotive effect, if that’s important; windows to the soul and all that.

“You’re a clever man, Sherlock,” Moriarty says, and John marvels for a second at just how fucking _adaptable_ he is. “But a poisoned one. Your brother did his best to protect you, but we can all see how that turned out. So I’m going to give you a choice. You can let me go, and we’ll keep playing this little game of ours for as long as it takes.”

He raises the gun again, and John schools his features into passivity.

“You can feed yourself the antidote.”

_Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck_

( _don’t move, don’t make a sound_ )

“Or.”

Moriarty moves the gun a few inches to the left, the barrel pointing to Sherlock’s mouth.

“You can give into it.”

John bites down on his tongue. _He doesn’t want to kill me, he doesn’t want to kill me, he doesn’t want_

Sherlock had been so sure, it had been a promise, a thing to hold onto before he knew he would need it, before he knew he’d always needed it. _He doesn’t want to kill me._ The world could explode around them, and Sherlock would survive, Sherlock will always survive. Sherlock is a survivor, endlessly resilient, building walls upon walls upon walls.

And what is bullheaded survival instinct against the endlessly adaptable? Complacency, that’s all. The sky isn’t infinite, the walls can only stack so high, but the snakes, the spiders will find their way through the cracks.

_Let’s go where we’ve never been._

Sherlock levels Moriarty with an unimpressed glare.

“You won’t kill me.”

_Please._

Moriarty grins.

“Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,” he quips, “it seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

John’s gaze darts between them and he sees the moment Sherlock understands, feels it in his heart before he knows it in his head. Three of them stand there, two with guns, one with intent to kill; Moriarty will shoot John if Sherlock agrees to it or he’ll shoot Sherlock if he doesn’t

_false_

_revision_

he’ll shoot himself if he doesn’t.

_Oh god._

“You wouldn’t want to watch?” John asks spontaneously, hoping to sound…what, incredulous? It’s not what he meant, but that’s how it comes out. “Couldn’t be bothered to hang around for the aftermath, I’d think that would be your favorite part.”

Moriarty’s narrowed eyes, the reptilian tilt of his head indicate that this is the first time he’s seriously considered John as a person, a player instead of a prop, the first time he’s seen him as more than just Sherlock’s greatest failing. It’s gratifying, in its way; John figures he’s beyond being insulted, after all they’ve been put through.

“He doesn’t understand,” Moriarty says shrewdly, and Sherlock winces. “Go on, Sherlock, tell him. Tell him how we operate.”

( _You’re not getting this one, you bastard._ )

“He doesn’t need to see the outcome,” Sherlock says, keeping his gun raised as Moriarty paces him. “He just wants to cause a bit of trouble; wants to sow the seeds of destruction. It’s enough for him to know they’re there; hanging around for the results would be…overkill.”

“’Atta boy.”

John’s mind races—they should’ve thought this over more, they should’ve come with a plan ( _too late for that,_ and what would it have been, it’s not as though they didn’t try)—what variables are in play, what pieces are left on their side of the board? Sherlock won’t betray him, he _wouldn’t_ (is Moriarty convinced?) and Moriarty will do anything (absolutely) to achieve his ends (what ends? chaos, destruction, uproot everything), and John is still the unpredictable, still the wild card, still the _unanticipated variable_ (use it, use it, how)—

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock doesn’t risk looking at him (taking his eyes off Moriarty) but John anticipates the response so vividly he may as well hear it aloud.

_John._

“It doesn’t seem like he’s leaving you much of a choice, does it.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows lower, his trigger finger twitching.

“I’d rather have you do it, if it’s all the same.”

Sherlock does look at him then, _are you asking what I think you are,_ and John nods as severely as he’s able, considering. _Please understand me._ Closing his eyes (is that wise?), Sherlock lowers his gun; Moriarty parts his lips in a mocking little “o” as Sherlock lifts his arm again and presses the barrel to John’s temple.

“Is this what you wanted?” Sherlock grits. “All your plans, your little hints. The blood you’ve poured on my hands, the mistakes I’ve made trying to figure out the games, the things you’ve tried to show me that I’ve missed. This will make it stop?”

For the first time John can recall, Moriarty looks genuinely perplexed; he hadn’t seen this coming (none of them had, none of them could). Leaning his own gun on his hip, he taps his right index finger to his chin and licks his lips.

“An interesting thought,” he muses. “I applaud your sense of moral relativism, Mister Sherlock Holmes. You may fire when ready.”

Setting his mouth in a grim smile and his hands into fists, John’s eyeline slides sideways until he’s met Sherlock’s gaze. He’s not even sure what he wants to have happen next, what he meant for this to lead to; is this what a death wish feels like?

Sherlock flicks the safety off.

John holds his breath.

Tick, tick, tick.

_Just do it._

Tick.

_Don’t do it._

Tick.

_Solve it._

Tick.

_Fix it._

Click.

“Lost your privileges, Sherlock.”

Abruptly, sounds cease to be distinguished from one another and shapes lose their definition; in hindsight, John will be ashamed of his paralysis, but in the moment, there aren’t a lot of options.

What happens is this:

With every intent to fire, Moriarty raises his gun such that it’s pointed between John’s eyes; at close range, the target is impossible to mistake. Sherlock’s mind, for the first time in forever, is devoid of thought, completely and utterly empty, and he throws his free hand up in a gesture that combines reflex, instinct, and luck, perfectly timed and accurately placed. As Moriarty’s finger was already on the trigger, the Beretta goes off, _bang,_ but the bullet skims along the side of John’s head rather than piercing the center of it and it’s unacceptable that he should have been hurt at all but it’s the best they could ask for under the circumstances.

John presses his palm to the shallow wound, smearing blood across his palm, and drops to the ground, a defensive formality, as Sherlock’s momentum in knocking Moriarty’s arm away brings his own right hand, the one holding the gun, about five and a half feet above ground; as it happens, that spot coincides neatly with Moriarty’s temple. The result is as inevitable as anything, likely what their every interaction has ultimately been leading to, despite their efforts to the contrary.

_Bang. ~~~~_

The red spatter on the wall is a relatively fine mist, and after a moment, blood leaks out from under Moriarty’s head, spreading down the tile and stopping short of the edge of the pool where instead it seeps into the concrete. John remains crouched with his hands held slightly away from his body, as though he’d like to do something with them but can’t think of anything appropriate, and Sherlock’s arms drop back to his sides, the barrel of the gun warm against his thigh.

The course of action, from beginning to end, feels like an instant at the time and an hour upon reflection. In truth, it spans roughly six seconds.

In a proper story, one with a beginning, a middle, and an end, this moment would be one of relief, and a little while later, there would be a sense of triumph. The heroes have been saved, by each other and themselves, and the villain vanquished, a happy ending all round; certainly there are loose ends to tie up, cohorts to uncover and dispose of, crime scenes to be wiped clean, but all that happens off screen, after the book has run out of pages.

Life in general would be much easier if it were a proper story, John knows, with a beginning that flows organically into the middle and allows astute consumers to predict the more or less satisfying end. John doesn’t think about that too much.

John is a realist.

\---

A slight chill in the room causes the blood to congeal quickly, darkening to an appealing garnet sort of shade. Night may have fallen outside, or dusk; hideously artificial circles of white light ripple and flutter over the surface of the pool and give the appearance of necessity. It reminds John of a hospital.

He sits on the floor, leaning against the wall beside a locker room door, and rests his hands on his knees. Sherlock stands beside him with his hands clasped behind his back, his unseeing eyes fixed in Moriarty’s direction. Maybe on the gun clutched in his hand, or the way his suit jacket is slightly bunched up under his right shoulder, or the blank stare of his dead eyes. Maybe on nothing at all.

John tries to think of the last time he killed someone he knew, and can’t.

“We’ve really done it now, haven’t we,” he says lightly. It sounds wrong, feels wrong, leaves an uncomfortable tension in the air, and he regrets it immediately.

Sherlock hums.

Water sloshes against the walls of the pool and the air smells powerfully antiseptic.

John looks at his lap and sighs.

“Did you know it was going to happen?”

There are layers to the question, reaching back into the past to varying degrees ( _how long have you known, was there another way, did you want it to end like this, why, and why, and why_ ), yawning into the future ( _what do we do now, what are we going to tell them, are we going to survive, please, and please, and please_ ), and when Sherlock answers, John isn’t sure which one he’s addressing.

“I suspected.”

John isn’t sure he believes him.

The lights dim, just a shade. Out of the quiet, a siren begins to wail; John wonders how long the ambulance has been idling outside, how much of this is a present, a gift to them.

They could run. They could flee the country, set up shop somewhere far removed, spend the rest of their lives in the wind. Sherlock’s skill set isn’t exclusive to London, and John’s medical fortitude is applicable everywhere.

They could run, but they wouldn’t get far.

John is a realist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cowards die many times before their deaths;  
> The valiant never taste of death but once.  
> Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,  
> It seems to me most strange that men should fear;  
> Seeing that death, a necessary end,  
> Will come when it will come.
> 
> _Julius Cæsar_ (2.2.1008—13)


	22. a world in which time is like the flow of water

The first responders arrive from the medical team outside; three women and one man in dark flak jackets burst through the doors and rush to the body on the ground. They all have stethoscopes around their necks, probably out of habit. One of the women places her fingers under Moriarty’s jaw to take his pulse and shakes her head sadly at her comrades; the whole exercise is a pointless façade, but they need data to enter into their files.

Greg holds out a bright orange fleece blanket to John, who didn’t notice his arrival. The blanket sits in John’s lap between his legs and his chest, still folded in a florescent rectangle, and Greg shrugs and throws a matching blanket over Sherlock’s shoulders.

One of the paramedics opens the doors to drag in a gurney they must have left there when they arrived, and the man and one of the women hoist Moriarty’s body onto it without a trace of professionalism. As they wheel him back out, Greg coughs obviously and puts his hands in his pockets, looking at the floor.

“Either one of you care to tell me what happened here?”

John almost laughs aloud. What the hell is he supposed to say to that?

“Suicide. We did everything we could.”

Thank god for Sherlock.

Greg smirks and doesn’t buy it for even a second.

“The autopsy’s gonna bear that out, is it?”

Sherlock clasps his hands behind his back and lowers his shoulders.

“I should imagine so, Detective Inspector, although you might take the matter up with Doctor Hooper.”

Thank god for Molly.

They linger there for another minute, the three of them; John feels inadequate, sitting on the floor, and the blanket slips from Sherlock’s shoulders as he reaches down to help him up. John catches his own blanket, still more or less folded, and holds it to his chest.

“I’ll need your official statements,” Greg says distantly. He doesn’t want them, and he knows they won’t give them. Protocol.

“Of course,” Sherlock says, the same way old acquaintances promise to keep in touch after running into each other on the street. Platitude.

None of them are quite sure what they’re waiting for.

Water continues to lap against the edge of the pool and Sherlock turns on his heel, striding purposefully towards the door. John follows instinctively, falling into step beside him and keeping his head up. They drop the blankets by the door; Sherlock’s falls in a puddle.

The drive back to 221B Baker Street takes two hours and 50 minutes. Sherlock pulls up in front of the building and the car idles in the dark as they stare at the fascia.

Clearing his throat, John thinks about telling Sherlock that he loves him.

Sherlock cuts the ignition and steps out onto the pavement.

\---

Around dawn, John wakes up screaming, having dreamed that he had seen Mycroft and Paul, who is in a steel coffin six feet down, coming out of the tube station at Piccadilly Circus, and then seen Sherlock standing on the roof of the Criterion Theatre, right beside the skylight, which for some reason had been terrifying.

As he presses his palm to his chest, right over his pounding heart, and tries to control his breathing, Sherlock puts his hand on his shoulder. John is sweating, and Sherlock’s hand is cool and dry, and between them they find a decent equilibrium.

Three hours later, they wake up for real, and the first thing John does is tell Sherlock that he loves him.

Sherlock smiles a little sadly and says thank you.

\---

Sitting in his quite comfortable chair in front of the quite unlit fireplace, John considers going into the clinic and wonders whether he would be welcomed if he did. Sherlock hasn’t gotten out of bed yet, as far as he knows, though he can’t really blame him. There’s not much here.

Oh, wait; footsteps. John tilts his head, ostensibly to open his ear to the door better although it doesn’t make much difference, really.

The cadence is familiar.

“John.”

He smiles briefly.

“Mycroft.”

After a heavy beat, Mycroft walks to Sherlock’s chair and sits, clasping the handle of his umbrella where he holds it between his knees; he looks about as scraped raw as John feels, which is both disconcerting and a relief.

Accidentally, they sigh at the same time and with roughly the same weight, and John clears his throat to pretend it didn’t happen.

“John,” Mycroft says as though he agrees. “I don’t know that you understand the full magnitude of what you and Sherlock have done.”

“Didn’t you hear,” John dismisses, “it was suicide.”

Mycroft’s smile looks like it hurts. “John, I have of course read Doctor Hooper’s preliminary report; do not insult my intelligence with your fiction.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Mm.”

There are words that belong to situations like this. “I’m sorry,” “How can we help,” “Please don’t be too hard on him.” The thing is, though, John isn’t sorry, especially, and he’s not sure he particularly wants to have any part in cleaning up the mess Moriarty left behind. Anyway, whatever punishment is coming their way, there’ll be no escaping it, and John isn’t going to try.

He thinks about putting the kettle on, then thinks better of it.

“Brother mine.”

Sherlock steps to John’s shoulder, drawing himself up arrogantly; amusingly, he’s taken the time to put on a suit, the shirt this time a lush aubergine. ( _Showoff._ ) Deigning to nod, Mycroft stands, putting his weight on his umbrella handle as he does, and fixes Sherlock with an accusatory stare.

Sherlock refuses to be cowed. “Always a pleasure,” he greets indifferently.

“You disobeyed my explicit order, Sherlock.”

“If you should choose to view it as such.”

His breath hitching, Mycroft visibly bites back a retort, his eyes narrowed.

“You would do well to show some trace of embarrassment,” he recovers after a moment. “I of all people might prefer to sweep this matter under the rug, but the extent of the discord Moriarty has left behind is potentially _staggering._ ”

Sherlock scoffs, and John wonders if perhaps he’s taking this just a touch too lightly.

“Don’t try to pawn this off on _me,_ ” he sneers. “How long did you honestly think you were going to be able to perpetuate this charade? Until Moriarty had the entirety of Parliament under his thumb? His death was inevitable, you’re certainly aware, and you know what the consequences will be if you admit that you sent a free agent up against him. And one with a personal stake in the outcome, no less.”

John grimaces at the reminder, anger and bitterness trickling through his veins in search of a target, a source, finding none. Meanwhile Mycroft winces, a rare moment of total transparency: _I know the cost of what I’ve done and please find it in yourself to be kind, because I was only trying to do what was right._

John is tempted to give him the leeway.

“Your soulmate’s life being in danger may give you a free pass with some of the bleeding hearts, but you must know that the majority is far more pragmatic,” Mycroft says eventually. “And as my employee, you were hardly a free agent at the time.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “You’d rather they view me as your subordinate?” he challenges. “How do you think _that_ will look to the commonwealth? Even if they choose to ignore the nepotism.”

“You were the person best suited to the task at hand.”

“And I’m sure that’s the point everyone will focus on.”

He’s right, of course, as Mycroft is no doubt aware. John wonders how long this effort at one-upmanship will go on, how many times it’s played out in the past. How many times Sherlock has won.

Mycroft closes his eyes and briefly purses his lips.

“I will bring the matter to Doctor Hooper’s attention,” he acquiesces, and that’s about as close to an admission of guilt as they’re likely to get (on anything, ever, in perpetuity). Sherlock smirks as though he’s regained complete control.

“See to it that she receives a raise.”

John puts his hand over his mouth to cover a laugh and Mycroft furrows his brow suspiciously.

“You think I need to _bribe_ her?”

“I think she deserves it.”

Mycroft raises his eyebrows. “Sherlock, she doesn’t even have her soulmate yet.”

“All the more reason,” John cuts in, quirking Sherlock an appreciative glance and thinking nostalgically of Sarah. “She’s gotten as far as she has with that hanging over her head, you know she must be good.”

Sherlock grins indulgently. “And for remaining at my beck and call all these years, don’t you think she deserves a bit of additional favor?”

His attempt to lighten the mood is surprising, but John pretends he saw it coming, widening his eyes slightly in Mycroft’s direction, _come on now,_ and looking as though this is the most obvious proposition he’s ever heard. Mycroft rolls his eyes, seemingly for show, and nods deliberately.

“I’ll call in a favor.”

Yes, because that’s necessary.

John drums his hands against his chair’s armrests.

“We done here?”

Mycroft’s and Sherlock’s eyes meet over John’s head.

_Of course not._

Sherlock turns away first.

“John,” Mycroft says without looking at him, “I will do all that is within my power to protect you both, and I will work with Doctor Hooper to fabricate the murder as a suicide, but you must understand that I am telling the truth when I say that we don’t know the extent of the reach of Moriarty’s network.” He deigns to lower his reluctant gaze to John then, and it’s understandable why he tried to put it off. “His clients will all be removed from their positions and penalized to the greatest extent of our abilities, of course, and your names will be kept as confidential as those of everyone else assigned to this operation, but I…would be remiss in offering protection from forces I cannot wholly identify.”

John holds his stare, assessing, trying to see beyond what he’s saying to what he means. It’s difficult, but not impossible. Mycroft and Sherlock share the habit of not completely speaking their minds, after all; John’s going to have to get used to it, if he isn’t already.

Sherlock.

_Don’t try to pawn this off on me._

Oh, Mycroft…

Taking a steady breath, John leans forward over his knees.

“Mycroft,” he says carefully. “Are you asking, what I think you’re asking. Because if you are, I’m not sure you should be.”

He feels Sherlock’s pride in him without needing to look back. It’s nice.

Oddly, Mycroft doesn’t try to argue, merely softening his gaze and giving John a few moments of silence before he delivers his denouement.

“I won’t impose upon you just now,” he replies, equally measured. “But if you should find at some point in future that you would like to play an active role in our…endeavors, I hope you would feel free to enquire after the opportunity.”

What a thing to say.

John would prefer not to imagine a future in which he and Sherlock (it’s a package deal) would even entertain the idea of plunging back into this world, of putting their lives on the line to dismantle Moriarty’s web.

“Thank you,” he says, trying to muster some sincerity even though he doesn’t understand why he should when they all must know what he means.

Then Mycroft goes, and Sherlock swans around to his chair and sits, unbuttoning his suit jacket and bouncing his knees, his gaze jumping restlessly around the living room.

John smiles.

_We’ll get there soon._

\---

“You feel safe around me,” Sherlock says that night over dumplings and egg foo young at the kitchen table. John nearly chokes.

“I’ve almost been killed more times in the past month than I’d care to remember,” John corrects. “Once by you!”

“You’re welcome.”

John laughs, kind of, and rests his elbow on the table. “You’re a dick, you know that?”

“But I didn’t entirely mean in the physical sense,” Sherlock goes on as though John hadn’t said anything. “Do you know, even if they claim to be, even if they think it to be true, most people on an unconscious level never feel completely safe? You, you’re just the opposite. I, and this, this relationship, make you feel safe at the root, so you can indulge in throwing your physical well-being into jeopardy.”

John leans back in his chair, more collapsing than controlled, and lays his hands on the edge of the table.

It’s all true, isn’t it.

No white picket fence, no boring desk job. No clock-watching, no office parties, no film-set suburbia. No stability and security. They break all the rules they want, carry on just as they please, balance and keep each other in check.

And on top of all that, he’s not dead.

_I will never tire of living as long as there is us._

“You’re fantastic,” John murmurs. Sherlock closes his eyes and takes a breath before he opens them again.

“And what are we?”

Oh.

Good question.

John doesn’t think Sherlock is quite back to thinking that John is going to leave now that Moriarty is gone, but still.

What are they? A good question deserves a good answer, and anything that might have sufficed Before certainly won’t do Now.

Proposed transaction of: one (1) ingrained self-loathing for one (1) post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the amount of one (1) lifelong partnership.

It’s the world’s greatest classifieds entry.

When the faint traces of amusement at his own errant thoughts fade, John looks Sherlock in the eye and projects all the certainty that exists in the world into his face, his posture, his voice, his words:

“I don’t know.”

Where John expects a scandalized glare or, if he’s lucky, a burst of laughter, Sherlock offers only a contemplative stare, which actually makes more sense, considering. While he waits, John tries to figure out exactly what he meant; the surface is obvious enough, but what is it _really?_ Does it even have a meaning? Does it need one? Isn’t it enough to not know, to admit that they aren’t static? Are they even knowable, does this question _have_ an answer?

( _Can you feel the world slowly moving?_ )

“If it makes you less sad, I will die by your hand,” Sherlock says then.

Yes, exactly.

\---

The next day is nice. Well, no, it’s freezing cold and a little wet, but they have a decent chat about nothing in particular, and in the afternoon Sherlock solves a wealthy dowager’s case (financial paperwork missing from the wall safe) from their living room in about four minutes flat (her son and his wife are trying to rob her blind). It’s not remotely worth Sherlock’s time, but John appreciates the simplicity and straightforwardness of the whole thing, and the dowager accidentally adds two extra zeros to the sum she transfers into their account and refuses to listen to John’s attempt to alert her to the error.

The day after that, Sherlock doesn’t get out of bed and nothing happens at all. John thinks it’s a Saturday. Then he remembers that it’s Wednesday, but it doesn’t really change anything; he has a piece of toast with jam for dinner and wonders where they go from here.

\---

Greg calls the next afternoon, wanting help on some tiger smuggling thing that somehow involves a doctor’s murder; maybe two murders, he’s not sure they’re connected but it would be nice to have the extra clues. The first question John asks is “Are you sure you need our help,” and Greg admits that he probably doesn’t but he’d appreciate it and CSI found this toothpick that DI Bradstreet won’t stop harping on about so it would be great if Sherlock could come over and shut him up.

The first question Sherlock asks is “What does this have to do with Moriarty,” and John tells Greg they’ll call him back.

“Sherlock,” John says carefully, a little nervously, as he puts Sherlock’s phone down on the coffee table. “You know Moriarty’s dead?”

“Of course I know that,” Sherlock spits, “I was there just as you were, but Moriarty doesn’t need to be _alive_ to be at the root of any of this, any criminal activity. Mycroft himself doesn’t know the extent of his reach, it must be nearly infinite.”

John nods mechanically, not quite meeting Sherlock’s eyes. “You think he’d be interested in postmortem _tiger smuggling._ ”

Sherlock sighs dramatically and drops into his chair. “No…”

“But…”

“Oh, Bradstreet is such an opportunist, I was just looking for a more interesting angle to explain things. If the toothpick proves to be relevant, it was one of the doctor’s clients, and if it isn’t, it was one of his ex-girlfriends.”

John sits in his own chair and arches his eyebrow. “You’re making that up.”

Sherlock shrugs. “I happen to recall a similar incident in 2006 in which a discarded toothpick proved to be an invaluable clue to a doctor’s murder, and now I’m merely making inferences which require substantiation. The substantiation itself is Lestrade’s job, and Bradstreet will be all too happy to assist if he’s made aware that I was the one making those inferences; it’s all fine.”

“Bradstreet thinks awfully highly of you, then.”

“Merely the results of my finding a man a few years back who had faked his own death.”

“Nothing to it.”

“Not at all.”

John catches himself laughing; it’s so easy to fall into this idle banter with Sherlock, this meaningless back-and-forth. They could go on for hours, probably.

He smiles a little sadly and flexes his left hand into a loose fist. Sherlock tilts his head a few degrees.

Silence.

A lingering chill seeps in through the cracked window; if they were to light the fire, John imagines that it would be blown out, although realistically the wind is weak and the fireplace is recessed into the wall. The air reeks of chlorine, although realistically all their medical and cleaning supplies are stored in the cabinets and the nearest swimming pool is about seven blocks away and underground.

Sherlock drums his fingers against the armrest.

The room has been restructured in a very specific way such that looking anywhere but up feels like standing on the edge of a cliff.

_All of this is allegory._

(Is it not so?)

“Sherlock,” John murmurs. “You know Moriarty’s dead.”

Sherlock stops drumming his fingers, and the wind whistles piercingly.

“The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague.”

John recognizes the quote from somewhere he can’t place.

The air is thick, and breathing is more difficult than it ought to be.

“Do you believe what he said?” Sherlock asks. “That he and I had never met, that he thought I was interesting and arranged cases for me to solve until it was time enough for a proper introduction?”

What John hears is: _Do you believe that he hasn’t controlled every aspect of my life since I was a child?_

What John hears is: _Do you believe that he and I are not the same?_

John sighs and knows his answer will be incomplete.

“I think,” he says after a minute, “that he probably did know about you before you joined up with NSY. I think he lied about that. I think that it’s _possible_ he _could have_ had some influence over some things in your life growing up. But I think he would’ve preferred to sit back and see how you handled yourself on your own. In the real world, you know. Trial by fire. Besides, he was nearly your age; I don’t think he had any governmental insiders when he was a _child._ ”

Pausing, he debates with himself over how to finish and comes up with this:

“I think he wanted so badly for you to be another version of himself, and he told himself so many times that you were, that he didn’t have any choice but to believe it.”

Sherlock nods as though he expected nothing less, as though he is satisfied. (Nothing about this will ever be satisfying.)

“He was his own undoing.”

“In pretty much every sense.”

(Are you content?)

Standing, Sherlock goes to the coffee table and picks up his mobile. The screen alights as he wakes it up, opening his Call History and holding his thumb over Lestrade’s number.

“He follows me.”

John draws his lips into his mouth and bites down.

“That has always been his power,” Sherlock says softly. “The threat of the thing, the anticipation of it is worse than the event because the mind conjures details that are far deadlier than the reality could ever be. He died knowing I would be haunted by his specter and it allowed him to go peacefully.”

“And if he lied about one thing, what’s to say he didn’t lie about everything.”

Sherlock chuckles. “Not everything; that’s the beauty of it. He surely lied about some things, but which ones? It’s just enough uncertainty to cause a bit of chaos, as he always wanted.”

John stands but doesn’t go anywhere.

“You can put him behind you, you know.”

“Can I?”

Good question.

( _I don’t know._ )

“Well,” John admits, “not right now, probably. But, you know. I’ll help.”

(He’ll be haunting me too, after all.)

Time passes indifferently, and Sherlock blinks a few times.

“I love you too.”

He taps the screen and holds the phone to his ear, and John smiles a small smile.

“So what have you got for me, Lestrade?”

\---

The murder of the tiger-smuggling doctor takes about a week to decipher; it was an ex-girlfriend (thanks, Sherlock) unrelated to the smuggling ring but acting violently and irrationally due to a long-undiagnosed case of syphilis, of all things, having turned her brain into a sieve (thanks, John). Sherlock doesn’t bring up Moriarty again, but John is a bit on edge with the anticipation of it.

On a nondescript Thursday, Mycroft offers to update John’s DOH registry to “Matched [Classified],” thereby circumventing the need to enter Sherlock’s blood into the system, but John refuses so adamantly that he offers instead to redact John’s registration entirely, which Sherlock appreciates very much. He doesn’t ask them again to join his task force in wiping out Moriarty’s network, but every once in awhile he gives John a meaningful sort of look that reminds him the offer is on the table in perpetuity.

The effort is taking a long time. John suspects they’ll offer their services eventually, though he still can’t quite figure out what the tipping point will be.

Well.

(Write it down and see how wrong you are.)

There's no need to rush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it makes you less sad, I will die by your hand  
> Hope you find out what you are; already know what I am  
> And if it makes you less sad, we'll start talking again  
> You can tell me how vile I already know that I am
> 
> Lacey, J. (2003). The boy who blocked his own shot. On _Deja entendu_ [CD]. Charlotte, NC: Triple Crown, Razor  & Tie.
> 
> "The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague."
> 
> Poe, E. A. (2002). The premature burial. In _Edgar Allan Poe: Complete tales and poems_ (pp. 217-226). Edison, NJ: Castle Books.
> 
> Chapter titles adapted from _Einstein's Dreams_ by Alan Lightman (2004).


End file.
